Concerns about the fate of a lime-green hexagonal fence have a hamlet in uproar.
Toby Garrett, 37, has been told to demolish his vibrant work of art in front of his Sedbury, Forest of Dean home close to Chepstow.
He had failed to obtain approval for the fence as well as an adjacent greenhouse with a dome-shaped roof.
Despite no complaints from the nearby community, the artist has nonetheless been forced to take down both sculptures as they ‘affect on visual amenity’.
Toby said: ‘People on my street have sent me messages saying they are gutted because it cheers Sedbury up.
‘I phoned the council and was told art is not allowed without planning permission and I have to take it down within two weeks.
‘I make art to make people happy. I’m sorry it doesn’t make everyone smile.’
Toby’s greenhouse is based on London’s famous Gherkin building.
The 37-year-old could apply for retrospective planning permission to save the structures, but fears it will be a lost cause.
Meanwhile, hundreds of locals in the Forest of Dean have rallied behind Toby and supported the artist’s battle to save the fence and greenhouse.
A petition against the planning decision has now amassed 400 signatures.
It reads: ‘A local man toby who has done some amazing art sculptures in his garden, which all local residents love!
Toby’s battle to save his fence has been backed by 400 people.
‘The council has now decided he has to take it all down.
‘Which has upset a lot of people as this man has spent all his time and effort to brighten the village up.’
A spokesman for Forest of Dean Council said it was investigating the planning dispute.
He said: ‘Forest of Dean District Council is aware of the matter regarding a planning dispute at Buttington Road, Sedbury and the case is currently under investigation.
‘As the investigation is ongoing, we will not be making any further comment at this time.’
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has directed its Members of Parliament (MPs) to ensure that they attend all parliamentary sittings and not to embark on any travel that will affect their attendance in Parliament.
This directives, the party said, were in solidarity with its Caucus in Parliament to fight against what the party termed as “the obnoxious Constitutional Instrument the Electoral Commission is seeking to lay before Parliament.”
The party has also recalled its MPs who have travelled with immediate effect.
A statement issued and signed by the General Secretary of the NDC, Fifi Fiavi Kwetey, said the party at its Functional Executive Committee (FEC) meeting held in Accra last Tuesday, issued the directive and resolved that the period from the evening of that day to March 31, 2023, has been declared as “Operation Save Our Democracy.”
In line with that, the party in the statement also directed all its parliamentary aspirants in constituencies where the party has sitting MPs to suspend their campaign activities as any breach of the directives shall attract severe sanctions.
It further asked all the party’s regional and constituency executive to ensure strict compliance with the directives.
It stated that dates for the filing of nominations, vetting of parliamentary aspirants and parliamentary primaries remained unchanged.
The party last month from February 22 to 24, 2023 opened nominations for its presidential and parliamentary primaries.
Acoording to statistics from the NDC’s Elections Directorate indicated that a total of 872 persons picked forms for the party’s parliamentary primaries in 249 constituencies out of the 279 with the highest number of aspirants from the Greater Accra Region of 143 and 105 in the Ashanti region.
Presidential
Those who picked forms for the presidential primaries were former President John Dramani Mahama; a businessman from the Weija-Gbawe Constituency of the party, Ernest Kwaku Kobeah, former Chief Executive of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), Kojo Bonsu and a former Minister of Finance and former Governor of Bank of Ghana, Dr Kwabena Duffuor.
Per the timetable of the elections issued by the party in January, 2023, aspiring presidential and parliamentary candidates are to submit their completed nomination forms between March 20 to 22 before vetting would commence on March 27 to 29.
There would also be a window for appeals on the outcome of the vetting process between March 30 to April 6 before the election on May 13.
The two elections would be held on the same day on Saturday, May 13, 2023 in all the voting centres in all the 276 constituencies including Santrokofi-Apkafu-Lolobi and Likpe (SALL) in the Oti Region.The NDC headquarters would also constitute a voting centre.
Frozen constituencies
The party has also put on hold the picking of nomination forms in 27 constituencies with regard to the parliamentary primaries to allow for further engagements with key stakeholders to ensure that the primaries in those areas would lead to outcomes that would favour the party’s performance in those constituencies, according to a statement issued by Mr Kwetey last month.
Two old boys of the Mfantsipim Senior High School have been listed under the social impact category of the 2023 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list.
From humble beginnings in Ghana’s capital – Accra, an Artificial Intelligence startup jointly established by the two has received recognition from Forbes, an American Business magazine.
Kwame AI, developed by Dr. George Boateng and Victor Kumbol, is an AI-powered web application that is making science and technology education readily accessible to students across Africa and other parts of the world through smartphones.
Their web app employs an artificial intelligence teaching assistant known as Kwame – a name sourced from Ghana’s first President “Kwame Nkrumah”, to obtain instant answers to science questions and also view past standardized exam questions on its Kwame AI web app.
“It’s a huge honor for my cofounder, Victor and I to be recognized on the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 303 Europe list for our hard work at Kwame AI towards impacting the lives of millions of young Africans using AI and mobile devices,” Dr. Boateng, Chief Executive Officer of Kwame AI said.
He explains the inspiration to develop the user-friendly web app was ignited during the group’s 4th annual edition of an innovation boot camp in 2017.
They realized out of the 27 trainees who attended, a quarter of them had laptops, yet 100% possessed smartphones. It compelled them to redesign their coding module to fit the five-inch screen – a first of its kind in Ghana.
“Realizing the potential of our smartphone-based course, in 2018, we created SuaCode, a smartphone-based online coding program aiming to teach millions across Africa how to code by exploiting the proliferation and untapped capabilities of smartphones. Between 2018 and 2020, we ran 4 pilots of SuaCode that reached 3K learners across 69 countries (42 in Africa). Our alumni have landed coding internships and jobs at Microsoft and Google, and others are now studying computer science/engineering at top universities such as Yale, Dartmouth, MIT, and Columbia. We then built an AI teaching assistant, Kwame to help us scale our support to students in the coding course and for science education,” he said.
The nomination comes at the heels of recent major global recognition of the company’s works such as the 2022 IBM New Creators and the 2021 MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35.
The group is currently enhancing features on Kwame AI to have primary and secondary school students in remote parts of Ghana ask educational questions in local dialects like Twi without call charges and get curriculum-aligned answers.
This is to ensure that students not only in Ghana but across Africa have personalized, high-quality educational support daily, regardless of their limited or no access to the internet.
Forbes has recently released its eighth annual Under 30 Europe list. The exclusive list recognizes the outstanding achievements of young founders, leaders, and entrepreneurs who are creating an impact and driving change in Europe.
Forbes’ eighth annual Under 30 Europe list showcases a remarkable group of young founders, leaders, and entrepreneurs, who collectively raised more than $3 billion to reshape Europe and beyond. Among these outstanding individuals is Jordan Oguntayo, a 14-year-old Nigerian-British model and the youngest person on the list.
At just 14 years old, Oguntayo is making waves in the modeling industry as one of the most successful child models in the world.
The Nigerian-British model has achieved more in his short career than most do in a lifetime, and now he’s being recognized as one of Forbes Under 30 Europe’s honorees.
His story is one of perseverance and hard work. He started his modeling career at the tender age of seven, shooting with fashion powerhouse Burberry.
Since then, he’s worked with some of the biggest names in fashion, including Dior, Calvin Klein, Moncler, Tommy Hilfiger, and Primark. He’s even walked in London Fashion Week and been a mainstay on Zara’s campaign for the past three years.
It’s not just his impressive resume that makes Oguntayo stand out.
He has also become an inspiration for children of color around the world, proving that with hard work and determination, anything is possible.
Despite facing obstacles along the way, he continues to push himself toward his ultimate goal of becoming the most-booked child model in the world.
What success means to Jordan Oguntayo
As a young Nigerian-British model, Oguntayo has an unmatched work ethic.
He has had more than 300 shoots around the world, including in Germany, Hungary, and Amsterdam, and has traveled to Spain over 20 times for his work with Zara.
His dedication and passion for modeling have led him to achieve more in a few short years than many do in their entire careers.
However, Oguntayo’s success is not just about his own achievements. As a young Black model, he is helping to inspire children of color to reach for their dreams and achieve their goals. He wants children around the world to understand that with hard work and dedication, anything is possible.
His success story is a testament to the power of passion and perseverance, as he continues to push for his goal of becoming the most-booked child model in the world.
At just 14, he is already a role model for many young people around the world, and his future looks brighter than ever.
Attacker Erich Berko assisted in Hallescher FC’s 2-2 draw with SC Verl on Friday night at the Stadion a der Poststraße in Germany’s third division.
A short while after the 1,200 spectators had taken their places, the first goal was scored. Mael Corboz gave SC Verl the lead in the third minute. The hosts took a 2-0 lead as Nico Ochojski crossed the goal line in the 23rd minute.
In the 43rd minute, Tunay Deniz capitalized on his opportunity to score for Hallescher FC to make it 1-2. Verl was on the fairway and had a little lead at the break. Hallescher FC’s second goal, which made the score 2-2 in the 54th minute, was scored by Tom Zimmerschied, who got an excellent pass from Erich Berko.
Erich Berko 28, was substituted in the 68th minute. He has made five appearances, scored one goal, and assisted one in the league this season.
A murder suspect who was allowed to move about freely during his trial, as required by state law, fled the scene.
Two sheriff’s deputies walked Edi Villalobos, 28, into the Washington County Courthouse for his trial on charges that he killed a relative and stabbed a different guy.
One of the deputies may be seen in the surveillance video releasing Villalobos’ wrist restraints. The constable releases the defendant’s ankle restraints as he sits down on a chair next to a table.
Murder suspect escapes from courthouse after being unshackled
Villalobos, wearing black slacks and a blue dress shirt, walks over to a chair at the middle of the table where he is expected to sit, places a hand over it, then dashes out of the courtroom.
‘When it comes to removing the restraints, that’s what Oregon law requires us to do,’ a Washington County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told KATU.
Both deputies ran after Villalobos, with one trailing the other, but the defendant outran them out the door of the courtroom.
Edi Villalobos, 28 ran from the Washington County Courthouse during his trial on February 27 (Picture: KOIN)Edi Villalobos in custody after he ran from the Washington County Courthouse during his trial (Picture: KOIN)
Surveillance footage from other cameras throughout the courthouse document Villalobos’ escape. In the hallway, he got farther ahead of the deputies. Villalobos hopped in front of a woman and almost tackled a man as he ran through a staff only door.
A manhunt ensued for Villalobos, that included using drones.
It wasn’t until about two hours later when someone reported a person trying to break into an apartment on the 300 block of Southeast 4th Avenue, that deputies captured Villalobos. He was hiding under a blanket in a closet inside the apartment.
Edi Villalobos was arrested in 2021 on the charge of murder after allegedly stabbing and killing a relative, as well as allegedly stabbing an unrelated man (Picture: KOIN)Edi Villalobos has been indicted by a grand jury on charges related to escaping the courthouse (Picture: KOIN)
Villalobos was indicted by a grand jury on charges around his February 27 escape.
His trial has been postponed.
Villalobos is accused of stabbing to death his mother’s partner, Artemio Guzman-Olvera, 33, and fleeing in a vehicle in April 2021. He allegedly stabbed Saul Antonio Ramirez Aguierre, 26, a couple hours later in an apartment complex, The Oregonian reported at the time.
Director for Tertiary Education, at the Ministry of Education, Dr Bless Dzakadzi, has called for a dialogue to bridge the gap between academia and industry.
He said the economic situation across the continent should serve as an impetus to explore alternatives and potential solutions to adopt innovative entrepreneurship programmes to increase the employability of graduates.
Dr Dzakadzi said this in Accra at a graduation ceremony for a professional certificate of competence for operators within West and Central Africa on the theme, “Bridging the Gap Between Industry and Academia for Standardized Training and Job Creation.”
The graduating class, numbering 25, undertook six weeks of training in heavy-duty equipment organised by the Regional Maritime University and the National Association for Heavy-duty Equipment Operators Ghana.
The Director called for an unflinching preoccupation on the part of higher institutions to lead the drive of innovation and entrepreneurship to bridge the gap between academia and industry for sustained economic growth.
He called for an alignment of curriculum with industry to address various requirements and demands of the dynamic industry, saying “it is advisable that curriculum be revised regularly and developed in accordance with what industry needs.”
Dr Dzakadzi expressed concerns about the over reliance on classroom methodology and a theory-heavy approach and urged academia to review the existing pedagogies and make it more practical in approach.
“I believe it is possible for academics to regularly call guest speakers from different industries and allow students to interact with them to find out what is happening on the field.” Industry relevant online courses can be merged with the syllabus outlines to give students more insights about the industry.”
To bridge the gap between academia and industry, he said there was a need for workplace exposure through internships, live projects, and corporate interactions to provide students with the needed industry experience on the job.
He advised the class to apply the knowledge and skills acquired for sustainable development, adding that the economic transformation of the country depended on professional graduates with high-level practical and career-focused skills.
Dr. Jethro W. Brooks Jr., the Vice-Chancellor of Regional Maritime University, said the graduation ceremony was for the first batch of trainees under a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the University and NAHEOG to train operators of heavy-duty equipment.
He said the University had embarked on a massive engagement with the private sector for the provision of continuous development programmes for their employees to bring institutions closer to the industry for mutual benefits.
He stressed the need for standardized training and certification of operators within the sub-region to allow certified heavy-duty operators to seek job opportunities across borders.
A Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Ghana, Charity Sylvia Akotia has renewed calls for suicide to be decriminalised.
She is calling for the government to make amendments to the portions of the constitution which criminalise suicide.
The academic highlighted that legislation under the 1960 Criminal Code Act 29, Section 57 discourages individuals struggling with suicidal tendencies from seeking help.
She added that the aforementioned problem would actually increase the likelihood that the suicidal person would die.
Prof Akotia made these statements on Thursday, March 9, at an inaugural lecture at the University of Ghana dubbed ‘When Life Becomes Unbearable: Dynamics and Complexities of Suicidal Behaviour and Prevention in a Cultural Context.’
The professor proffered that decriminalising suicide attempts was possible stakeholders intervened and provided the best care possible via the legally required healthcare facilities that deal with public health emergencies.
She in turn explained that the threat of prosecution if one were to fail in their attempt to end their life would drive one to take extreme measures instead of making room for a change of heart.
Furthermore, Prof Akotia pointed out that suicide is frequently committed by those who exhibit suicidal behavior and are afflicted with a mental condition.
Prof Charity Akotia
She added that people who often consider suicide perceive it to be the only option when they are faced with a situation in which they feel overwhelmed by challenges and have run out of other viable options.
Moreover, research has shown that 93 percent of individuals who attempted suicide did so while suffering from a mental disorder.
Also, the World Health Organisation (WHO) disclosed in 2021 that over 700,000 individuals worldwide take their lives each year, and for every suicide death, there are at least 20 suicide attempts.
Again, it has been revealed by WHO that two of the most successful suicide prevention strategies were early detection and early intervention.
The professor eventually made mentioned that socio-cultural factors such as relationship breakups, neglect, hopelessness, and other emotional tendencies also influenced people to commit suicide.
Thus, she advocated for a support structure for such [suicidal] individuals and urged the establishment of a national suicide prevention center to gather data and utilize it to prepare for suicide prevention initiatives.
Prof Akotia also beseeched government officials to take a public health approach and concentrate on suicide prevention measures.
She further added that religious organisations can contribute by offering assistance and encouragement to those who try suicide.
She advocated the need to educate about suicide and raise awareness of the issue in the various communities in the country.
She also implored the media to use caution in their coverage of suicide-related issues since it encourages individuals to imitate such behaviours.
Vice Chancellor, Prof Nana Aba Appiah Amfo expressed excitement about Prof Akotia’s speech.
Prof Appiah shared with the gathering points she had taken from the delivery and ways in which she will apply them in her life going forward.
Rashid Tetteh, a defender, has reacted to joining FC Tulsa of the USL Championship.
Tetteh claims that he is pleased to have joined the team and that his season-long goal is to win the championship.
I’m really thrilled to begin the 2023 Season in this lovely state, Tetteh exclaimed.
It wasn’t an easy decision for me to move away from my family and prior team, but I knew Tulsa was the place I needed to be. The objective for this season is to join a brick-wall defence and assist us win the league championship.
“When I was approached with the opportunity to play for Tulsa it was a no brainer to make the move because of their commitment to the fans and community. I look forward to the coming season and can’t wait to get on the field!”
Tetteh played with the Panthers from 2015 to 2018 while attending High Point University, where he began his professional career in New Mexico. Tetteh established himself as a standout performer in the Big South Conference by earning spots on the Big South First Team All-Conference team in 2018, co-Defensive Player of the Year accolades in the Big South in 2017, and All-Big South Second Team recognition in 2016.
Tetteh also played while at High Point for the Carolina Dynamo for two brief periods in USL League Two in 2016 and 2017, then for the Des Moines Menace in 2018.
Tetteh will be an option for Blair Gavin when FC Tulsa goes to Miami this weekend to face Miami FC in the first game of the 2023 season.
The agreement followed a discussion at the GSA head office between Prof. Abass Braimah, Vice Chancellor of the TaTU, and the top management of the GSA on a potential collaboration in the training on and enforcement of the Building Code and other quality Standards.
The Director-General of the GSA, Prof Alex Dodoo, said that the collaboration was directly in line with his outfit’s mandate and that the Authority was fully committed to the partnership.
He pledged the Authority’s support to the TaTU and noted that the partnership would improve the capacity of the school and develop students for the country.
“Academic research should be a bedrock upon which industry must grow. We are keen on collaborating with you to make standards part of the students’ curriculum so that when they begin their careers, they can make reference to these standards in their respective fields of work,” he added.
Prof. Braimah, on his part, said if Ghana wanted to industrialise, collaboration between institutions like the TaTU and GSA was very key.
“We at the TaTU see the GSA as a very important institution, and together we can change the country,” he said.
Prof. Braimah stated that both GSA and TaTU should work together by incorporating some of the standards in the university’s curriculum so that when students graduate, they already have an idea of the requirements.
It was also agreed during the meeting that the GSA will visit the university and assess the various laboratories there for further collaboration in the testing of engineering products in the northern belt of the country.
Assin Central MP, Kennedy Agyapong, has threatened to sabotage the New Patriotic Party (NPP) by spilling its secrets if the government dares to collapse his companies.
In an interview with Sompa FM, The NPP presidential aspirant hopeful claimed that his party is plotting to collapse his companies.
He sounded a word of caution to the party if the persons deployed to cripple his companies are not withdrawn, he will embark on activities that will also kill the party.
“You are going there because Kwame Agyapong is a loudmouth. You want to collapse my companies because I want to contest. I’m being nice and charitable to the NPP but they shouldn’t dare me. Anybody who tries to kill my companies because I’m contesting for elections, I will kill the party.
“The things I know and will say will kill the company. I’ve gone through a lot from January till date but I’ve been very nice. If you want to collapse my company because of one person then I will also kill the company. I’m not afraid of anyone,” he fumed.
Kennedy Agyapong is hoping to lead the NPP into the 2024 election with a campaign to instill discipline and fight corruption.
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) flagbearer hopeful weighed in on the recently published Auditor-general’s report that pointed to fraud and impropriety in spending of COVID-19 funds.
“The performance of NPP during the COVID, I am not holding brief, we have made some mistakes that we all have to accept and I will be the first person to accept,” he said on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana program earlier this week.
“But if you compare the two governments, Akufo-Addo and Mahama, Mahama is not an alternative to Ghana because the man has been fortunate to succeed Atta Mills for two years,” he stated stressing that he has no justification to seek a final term in office.
When pushed by host Paul Adom-Otchere about Mahama’s claim that the NPP was corrupt, Agyapong responded: “NPP is corrupt, NDC is corrupt, that is why you haveKennedy Agyapong coming in.”
When he was reminded that he was an NPP man, he replied: “I am a disciplined NPP (member).”
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), the national regulatory body for food and medicine, has cautioned Ghanaians, particularly, cooks, against the use of plastic films (polyethylene) to wrap Fante kenkey before cooking.
This is because the temperature at which the kenkey is cooked with wrapped polyethylene (which contains bisphenol A, BPA), could release some harmful chemicals and toxins in the plastics into the food.
BPA, together with other chemicals are used as precursor materials in the manufacturing of plastics, which health experts say its high level of exposure to humans could pose some health risks.
The cooking process involving the use of wrapped polyethylene, the Authority said could contaminate the food and cause hormonal imbalances, reproductive issues, cancer, and immune system damage to consumers.
Mrs Delese Darko, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FDA sounded this caution in a health note issued by the Authority and copied to the Ghana News Agency.
She noted that though studies have shown that there was minimal health risk associated with the consumption with exposure to Fante kenkey wrapped with polyethylene, “the biological magnification of phthalates as their continual consumption might pose severe public health issues.”
“For example, a study conducted by Mensah et al (2012) showed that one of the primary concerns for the use of plastics in cooking Fante kenkey was the release of plasticizers, which are chemicals added to plastics to increase their flexibility and durability,” the release said.
“Plasticizers such as bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates have been linked to various health problems, including hormonal imbalances, reproductive issues, and cancer. When plastics are heated, plasticizers can leach into the food they are in contact with, causing food contamination,” the study established.
Mrs Darko, therefore, urged Ghanaians to use traditional wrapping materials such as dried plantain or banana leaves, adding that such materials are natural and do not release harmful chemicals when heated.
She added that such natural materials were known to enhance the taste and smell of food, thereby, improving its taste, and urged the public to make sure that their hot foods were not predominantly covered in plastic bags at the point of sale.
The CEO of FDA said their Public Education Unit would enhance its education and sensitization programme to producers and consumers about how to properly use plastic packaging materials in food production, markets, and homes.
She said the Authority would continue to engage consumers, consumer protection advocates, the scientific community, and producers, to ensure that the health and safety of the people of Ghana was guaranteed.
After leaving a bus full of people at the side of the road to have a coffee and use the restroom at a local café, a London bus driver was fired.
An employment tribunal heard that Ian Brown, who was already under caution for low attendance, missed the bus as a result of the incident.
When the controller called him to enquire as to why the bus was running late, Mr. Brown claimed that he was a victim of bullying, refused to continue operating the bus, and left it at a nearby stop.
CCTV footage also showed Mr Brown running a red light after becoming distracted by reading a letter inviting him to a disciplinary hearing.
Ian Brown tried to claim his controller was bullying him and stormed out of the vehicle when asked why he was late.
Mr Brown could be heard accusing his boss of bullying him, and that he was entitled to pay while suspended.
He said: ‘Controllers’ constant bullying and harassment while on duty goes unnoticed. Are you saying I have no rights to a toilet break or to be paid while off sick…. This is not a self-suspension but stress under duress.’
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Both the footage and Mr Brown’s attendance records were later reviewed at a misconduct hearing, which led to the driver being sacked on August 11, 2020.
However, his appeal on the grounds of unfair dismissal by Arriva London North also failed, the tribunal held on February 22 and 23, 2023, revealed.
A judgement report on the tribunal by Judge Tuck KC was posted online this month, which read: ‘On 13 March 2020 the claimant was driving a double decker bus on route 243.
‘Ms Bishop’s statement says he arrived late to take over the bus – at around 14.17 hrs, then left it unsecured at a bus stand, with the engine running and passengers on board, while he went to the café to use the toilet and collect a hot drink, not leaving the stand until 14.21hrs.
‘I understand this was agreed by the claimant who also confirmed his work was due to commence at 14.14hrs.
‘CCTV from a camera in the bus cab from 14.22 to 14.23 shows the claimant opening a sealed envelope while the bus appears to be stationary, then with the bus in motion, shows the claimant taking pages which had been in the envelope, opening them from folded to A4 size, and flicking through the pages.
‘The CCTV shows that the claimant left his indicator flashing when it should have been turned off as he was opening out the folded papers, and a second CCTV view of the same minute (some 10 seconds later) shows that the claimant was breaking as he approached a traffic light, shows the light turning from amber to red at least 3 seconds before the claimant reached the stop line, and the claimant proceeding across the junction.
‘It is not in dispute that the letter which was in the claimant’s hand and shown during this CCTV footage was the letter dated 12 March inviting him to a disciplinary hearing.’
According to the judgement, the controller told Mr Brown that a refusal to continue to drive would be a ‘self suspension’, to which the driver replied: ‘I’m not suspending myself, you are bullying me and I’m not fit to drive. You can collect the bus from Seven Sisters’.
Mr Brown then left the bus at the Seven Sisters station, where it stayed until it was collected by another driver, the judgement said.
Mr Tuck concluded that ‘I am satisfied that dismissal was within the range of reasonable responses. Furthermore, I would have found that the claimant contributed to his dismissal by 100 per cent.’
Media personality Afia Schwarzenegger has revealed that she doesn’t live her life to please others but rather to fulfil her own needs.
Publicly admitting to being a one-time addicted smoker, she disclosed that she no longer smokes not because of societal pressure but on personal health grounds.
“I don’t think anybody knows me more than my children, and I also don’t think anybody knows my children more than myself. So, what will you tell children who know my weakness and my strength?
“That their mother used to drink? I have not stopped drinking so when I say I used to drink it is bullshit.
“I used to smoke (and) my children knew it. I stopped smoking not because of society. Hello, hello, I didn’t do it for you,” she said speaking to the camera in an interview with blogger Zion Felix in Berlin, Germany.
She stated that the decision to quit smoking was “because I got so many issues…I stopped smoking because of my health. I had breathing issues and so many issues. I’m not the type of person who’s that strong,” she said.
Afia Schwarzenegger noted that she didn’t receive any pastor-related advice to quit smoking; rather, she simply made the decision to stop when she woke up one particular morning.
“For me, it is not any pastor that sat me down to advise me against smoking. Nobody told me to stop smoking, I woke up and I said, you know what, cigarette is out.
“And for drinking, I stopped then I went back, I will stop again and still go back and they (her children) knew it,” she added.
Nollywood actress Regina Daniels has urged celebrities and movie producers to abolish child labor in the entertainment business.
The actress discussed the exploitation of young girls and how it may severely impact their mental and physical welfare in a recent video that she posted on her Instagram page. Daniel stated that she recognizes how dangerous the industry is for women and that she was only saved (to a certain extent) due to her mother’s influence.
The actress described how she met a young girl on a set and was compelled to help her because of her age and situation. The young lady claimed she had left her parents’ house to work in Delta against their objections.
Notwithstanding the fact that her parents were based in Port Harcourt, the young woman claimed to have left home to work in Delta. She acknowledged having slept at a number of hotels with both male and female visitors and said she occasionally experienced harassment from them.
After a remarkable lottery victory, a man who has previously built homes is now the proud owner of his very own home.
Kevin Johnson, 34, who presently rents a home with his wife and four sons, claims that when he learnt that he had won an Omaze Million Pound House Draw ticket for just £50, his “knees almost gave way” and that he had won a London townhouse valued £3,000,000.
The four-bed Victorian home, which was the grand prize in a raffle to benefit the British Heart Foundation, is situated in Islington not far from where Kevin and his family currently reside. If they chose to reside there, they will also be given £100,000 in assistance.
The dad-of-four said: ‘We’re still pinching ourselves, whatever we decide to do long term, this is going to give us so much security as a family, it’s truly life changing for all of us.
‘We’ve always wanted to own our own house one day, so this really is a dream come true for us – we’ll be moving in as soon as we can.
‘When Omaze first called me, I recognised the lady’s voice from the TV adverts, so thought it must be genuine – but I didn’t for one second think we’d won the actual house!
Lucky family win £3,000,000 London house
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Kevin and Dee can now choose to move into the property or rent it out for extra monthly income (Picture: SWNS)
‘When the team arrived at my doorstep to tell me the good news – I was so shocked my knees almost gave way!
‘My wife was on her way home from work so I video called her straight away – she didn’t believe me at first, but when she saw the camera crew the penny finally dropped.
‘She screamed and turned her phone around to tell the packed train that we’d just won the Omaze house – all the other commuters started clapping – it was crazy.
‘I won’t need to use any of my carpentry skills on the house as it’s absolutely perfect – the kids are going to love it.’
Kevin and his wife Dee can now choose to move into the four-bedroom house or rent the property out for an estimated income of between £6,000 and £7,000 a month.
James Oakes, Chief International Officer at Omaze said: ‘We’re thrilled that Kevin and his family have won their dream home – and that he was able to contribute towards our biggest charity raise ever.
‘We’re incredibly proud that the Omaze community raised a staggering £2,000,000 for the British Heart Foundation in such a short space of time.’
Ghanaian gospel singer Sonnie Badu has flaunted his plush mansion and exotic cars on Twitter. After this post, netizens reacted.
Flaunting a GMC SUV and a customized number-plated Mercedes Benz on micro-blogging site, Twitter, the prosperity minister, and philanthropist hinted that the “toys” were up for a thorough clean-up.
The two black cars worth millions of Ghana Cedis were photographed in front of his Atlanta home.
“Dreams do come true.. car wash day for the toys .. I pray for you that everything you have dreamt about becoming will become a reality in Jesus name,” the Pastor of RockHill Church captioned online.
He also shared a snapshot of his other Mercedes Benz cars and revealed that it was his favourite car brand.
“I love black cars what’s your favorite color? I also love Mercedes I don’t do any other … what’s your fav car? I dreamt this now I live it by God’s grace … you are next in line,” he added.
Badu who recently established his own church after moving from the United Kingdom is known for his powerful and anointed worship songs, and he has released several albums including “Lost in His Glory”, “Colors of Africa”, “Covenant Keeping God”, “Soundz of Afrika”, and “Rhythms of Africa”.
He is also the founder of the Sonnie Badu Foundation, which provides aid to underprivileged children in Ghana and other African countries.
Dreams do come true.. car wash day for the toys .. I pray for you that everything you have dreamt about becoming will become a reality in Jesus name .. pic.twitter.com/dVBajpihW3
A guy could go to jail for using the N word on Twitter to refer to a Championship football player.
When Michael Obafemi, 22, was informed that he would be going on loan from Swansea City to Burnley, Josh Phillips, 26, responded with a racist tweet.
The football star’s parents are from Nigeria, and he was born in Dublin and raised in London.
Swansea Magistrates’ Court heard the racist tweet was deleted before Twitter blocked the account for breaching their social media terms.
Police traced the tweet to Phillips and made an arrest.
The 26-year-old admitted sending the racial slur on January 28 and said at the time he had been drunk.
He later pleaded guilty to sending a message on a public communications network that was grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing, contrary to the Communications Act 2003.
A victim impact statement from Obafemi was read out to the court and said: ‘The racist abuse towards me is totally unacceptable.
Swansea Magistrates’ Court heard the tweet was deleted before Twitter blocked Phillips account for breaching their social media terms (Picture: Media Wales)
‘It doesn’t matter what I do for a job or what colour my skin is. I am a human being and don’t deserve this behaviour.
‘This was extremely offensive and distressing for me, my family and friends, who all read it.
‘I hope the person who made these comments learns that this racist abuse is not acceptable.
‘Any kind of discrimination is totally unacceptable and I for one will not accept it.’
The judge warned Phillips he will face a football banning order and a potential prison sentence.
The case was adjourned for pre-sentence reports and the court was told how Phillips is of previous good character.
Judge James told Phillips: ‘I am going to adjourn your case for a pre-sentence report.
Michael Obafemi was born in Dublin and raised in London (Picture: Conor Molloy/News Images)
‘It is clear you have pleaded guilty to what is a very serious offence of this type.
‘The fact that I am adjourning for a pre-sentence report to be prepared should not be taken by you as any indication of sentence that will be imposed.
‘All options are and do remain open in this case, including immediate custody.’
Phillips has been released on bail until his sentencing at Swansea Magistrates Court on March 31.
Swansea City posted a tweet condemning ‘vile’ social media posts made after news of Obafemi’s loan move to Burnley at the time of the incident.
The club tweeted: ‘Swansea City is aware of disgusting racist abuse posted on social media in relation to Michael Obafemi’s loan move to Burnley.
‘The club is sickened by the vile language used in the offending posts, and is working to identify those responsible and take the strongest possible action.
‘The matter has been reported to South Wales Police, who are investigating. There is no place for racism or discrimination of any kind in society or football.’
Kumawood actress and film producer, Tracey Boakye is ecstatic after giving birth to a son in the United States of America.
The actress delivered a bouncing baby boy, the first with her husband Frank Badu Ntiamoah and her third child, on Sunday, March 5, 2023.
Tracey announced her new bundle of joy the next day by sharing some beautiful maternity photos which featured her husband.
Days after the announcement, the mother of three opened up about her childbirth and other matters related to her baby.
In an exclusive interview with Legit.ng, Tracey hinted that the new baby and the family are doing very well at their base in the US.
According to her, she felt proud to bring another child into this world.
“The feeling was not different from my previous deliveries. It has always been that great feeling, bringing an angel on earth,” she said.
Going further, Tracey indicated there would be a naming ceremony for the baby soon, adding that plans were already underway for the ceremony.
She revealed that the naming ceremony would be held in Ghana immediately after the family returned to Ghana.
The actress, who partially revealed the baby’s name as Nana Akwasi Ntiamoah, further disclosed that she would show the little boy’s face for the first time at the naming ceremony.
“We have already decided on a name for him and it is going to be outdoored during his naming ceremony in Ghana. At his naming ceremony, I’ll show his face so my fans can see him,” she said
The actress expressed gratitude to her fans and well-wishers for the overwhelming love they showed her after she made the announcement.
She said: ‘Following police enquiries undertaken throughout the Dawlish area, including CCTV trawls, review of Albina’s phone and a forensic post mortem; investigative officers can confirm that there was no third party involvement and that the death of Albina Yevko is not suspicious.
‘Our investigation shows that Albina had settled very well in the UK since moving from Ukraine and enjoyed living by the sea and being part of a new family.
‘She had made good friends, both Ukranian and English in the UK, enjoyed school and was very much welcomed by the local community.
Albina Yevko had been living in the Dawlish area (Picture: Devon & Cornwall Police)
‘We have informed Albina’s next of kin of our findings and we ask that their privacy is respected at such a difficult time.
‘The police’s role is to continue gathering information surrounding this matter and to submit a file to the coroner who will hold an inquest into this death in due course.
‘We would like to thank everyone who has helped us with our investigation into this matter. Our thoughts are with all who knew Albina at this tragic time.’
Albina’s mother, Inna Yevko, said in a statement shared by police: ‘Myself and my family are devastated to have lost our beautiful Albina.
‘Nothing can ever replace her in our hearts. We ask that our privacy is respected at this incredibly painful time.’
Ghanaian actress Lydia Forson has reacted following comments after one of her fans asked her to give birth to a child to serve as a legacy when she’s no more.
The actress has shared a message one of her fans sent to her in her private message. According to Lydia, she wouldn’t have shared it but the pressure she is facing from fans is too much for her.
According to the message shared by Lydia Forson, the fan who expressed her love for the actress advised her to get a man to get her pregnant so she can have at least one baby to continue her legacy. The fan also added that if the actress is not ready or willing to get married she should at least live the world a child from her.
Lydia Forson who shared the message from the fan slammed fans who run into her DM to pressure her on either getting married or having babies. She described it as an act that lacks love. She also slammed the fan saying that babies are not bought on Amazon, a shopping website.
“I’m only sharing this here so people who send/say this daily understand that this is NOT love. Love will have the emotional intelligence to know that babies are NOT bought on Amazon; nor do they guarantee your legacy lives on. Stop policing women’s wombs.”
Amidst calls for payments of ex-gratia to be scrapped, former Member of Parliament for Hohoe South, Kosi Kedem has proposed that a pension scheme should be instituted to cater for parliamentarians after their tenure in office.
Mr. Kedem was elected into the first Parliament of the fourth republic of Ghana on 7 January 1993.
According to him, the payment of ex gratia is not enough to sustain legislators for a lifetime.
Speaking to Raymond Acquah on Upfront on JoyNews, Mr Kedem said that “it will be a good idea because, in parliaments where pension scheme exists, they don’t pay them ex gratia. You cannot have ex gratia and pensions at the same time.”
He noted on Thursday that a pension scheme will save MPs from all the troubles that come with managing huge sums of money, a challenge some MPs are faced with when the ex gratia is paid.
“The way they pay the money to us is a very dangerous and unsafe mechanism. When you are given that bulk money you can misuse it, and you can invest it wrongly. What happens if the investment goes wrong?” He quizzed.
Mr Kedem said, “but with pension, you can be given some money in bulk then they spread the rest over your lifetime.”
Juxtaposing the unstructured nature of Ghana’s second parliament during his tenure, he said “during our time as I have told you, we were guinea pigs. They were experimenting with us. We did not even have condition of service; we were paid on account.”
“It means you cannot even make a budget for yourself. It is that they pay you as and when they decide. We were being paid on account, so our life was quite miserable,” he recalled.
However, he insisted that a similar plight could be avoided if a pension scheme is established.
“In other Parliaments, they have pension schemes but in the parliament of Ghana, they don’t have a pension scheme. So, whatever you are paid you have to depend on it for life. We are fighting for this pension scheme to be introduced if not for us but for the sitting MPs,” he added.
An inquest heard that a 13-year-old kid posted and saw internet suicide-related content while under lockdown.
On April 20, 2021, after getting off a bus, Zaheid Ali leaped off Tower Bridge.
Eight days later, his body was discovered in the River next to a pub in the east London neighbourhood of Wapping.
His suicide letter quoted lyrics from a Japanese song that describes the suicide of a 14-year-old girl, the Inner South London Coroners Court heard .
He had also followed someone in the US who had taken their own life, posted a ‘countdown’ on YouTube, and written on Twitter about his desire to kill himself, the hearing was told.
A WhatsApp exchange with school friends from March 2021, which was found after he died, revealed he said ‘I hate life at the moment and kind of want to give up.’
His father Mumen Ali told the hearing he was ‘baffled’ by what had happened to his son – who was born prematurely and suffered from a digestive disorder called internal malabsorption – as his behaviour had appeared normal.
Mr Ali said his son had become ‘glued to his phone’ and ‘stuck in his bedroom’ in the Easter holidays before he killed himself, but his parents did not think his behaviour was unusual.
Zaheid Ali died after falling from London’s Tower Bridge (Picture: PA)
He added: ‘We put it down to his hormones changing from being a boy to being a man.’
Mr Ali also said he believed his son was worried about Islamophobia after a shooting at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March 2019 which killed 51 people.
Una Sookun, vice-principal of the Ark Globe Academy in Elephant and Castle, south London, where Zaheid was a Year 8 pupil, told the court he was ‘academically very able’ but ‘quiet’ with a ‘very small friendship group’.
He ‘appeared to enjoy studying’ in Year 7 but when lockdown began, he started to struggle and did not engage as well with his schoolwork.
A passer-by had tried desperately to save the schoolboy (Picture: John Keeble/Getty Images)
When schools closed again between January and March 2021, he was allowed to be one of a small group of pupils who could carry on attending classes in person but he did not go initially because of concerns about catching coronavirus on the bus.
In September 2020 a ‘small concern’ was raised when he posted religious messages in a school chat forum.
Two months later, in a similar chat room, he ‘called for people to die’ and said he should never have been born.
On January 25 2021 he emailed his tutor saying he was struggling to wake up at 8am even though he had tried to.
Ms Sookun said of the WhatsApp messages: ‘It has been a massive learning for many of the students about raising that alarm straight away.’
Detective Constable Khadra Mallin from City of London Police told the inquest that officers were called by worried members of the public who heard someone calling for help in the Thames just after 8am on April 20, 2021.
One witness swam into the water in a bid to save him but only his school jacket and bag, which contained a note, were found.
An ‘intensive’ search by police on foot, helicopters and lifeboats began but his body was not found for eight days.
When police attended his school, a pupil said Zaheid had got on the number 118 bus at his normal stop in Canada Water but got off before arriving at the academy for the first day back after the Easter holidays.
A toxicology report by Dr Rebecca Andrews found no alcohol or drugs in his system and pathologist Dr Simi George recorded his provisional cause of death as immersion.
Recording a conclusion of suicide, assistant coroner Dr Julian Morris offered his ‘very sincere’ and ‘deepest’ condolences to the family.
He added: ‘The difficulty for all of us, and especially for you, is not being able perhaps to understand his personal and private thoughts and reasons as to why he did what he did.
‘We may never know those reasons. That must, I understand, provide ongoing anxiety and frustration from your perspective.
‘The age of 13 is too young for anybody.’
His father replied: ‘When he was born, I didn’t think he was going to survive.
‘The 13 years that he gave us, thank God for that.’
The Blue Economy and Governance Consult is urging the media to develop closer ties with the fishing industry, which will result in the production of accurate reporting for the sector’s overall benefit.
The CEO of the Blue Economy and Governance Consult, Richster Nii Armah Amarfio, was speaking during the advocacy group’s maiden media engagement in Tema. He said that in order for stories to accurately reflect events occurring on the ground, he expects media professionals and journalists to double-check facts with industry before publications are made.
“We are very much aware of the challenges our industry faces. We are very much aware of the fact that our fisheries resources are declining. But, as an industry we believe that we need to create more collaboration with the media — the media seems too removed from the industry.
“The media seems to report only what they see. One of the things we need to do, is to see if at such meetings like the international commission on the conservation of Atlantic tuna, media houses that can go, are allowed to join us so that they would understand how some of the processes work. Because if they attend, they will realise that Ghana is doing very well in terms of our fisheries management. We want to have a committed media to report on some of the positives that are happening in the industry.”
Richster Nii Armah Amarfio, who is also the Secretary for the National Fisheries Association of Ghana (NAFAG) and the Ghana Tuna Association (GTA), also lamented other issues bedeviling the industry which need increased attention.
He called for urgent attention on the training of high-level seafarers in the industry to be able to make up for the under-capacity of skilled staff to man vessels.
“We have failed to build capacity. We have raised this issue several times with Regional Maritime University. It is so expensive for my company for instance to import a Korean captain and pay him in hard currency at high rates. We would wish to have a Ghanaian crew who will be doing those. Today we don’t have a single Ghanaian fishing captain that any company can employ.”
Musician Sister Derby has subtly hinted that she has rekindled her ‘friendship’ with Medikalafter the Sowutwom Jay Z served her a hot breakfast on a Saturday morning.
Following the rumours that the rapper has allegedly dumped his wife and gone back to his ex-lover Sister Derby – The self-styled African mermaid has reacted to the trending rumours by adding more fuel to the already burning allegations.
Sharing a video snippet of their newly released song dubbed ‘Cold And Trophies’ – Sister Derby addressed Medikal as her bestie.
Now, as we all know, bestie here in Africa goes beyond mere friendship.
Sister Derby is simply trying to tell us that she’s back with Medikal and they are chopping themselves despite the rapper being married and she also having her serious boyfriend.
Take a look at the screenshot below to know more…
Meanwhile, Ghanaian actress and mother of one Fella Makafui has broken her silence for the first time ever since rumours went rife that her marriage to Medikal is in crisis.
There have been rumours in town that the Jay Z and Beyonce in the Ghanaian music industry Medikal and Fella Makafui marriage has hit the rocks with the rapper finding ways to get back with his former girlfriend Sister Derby.
This was heightened after Fella Makafui appeared at various events without her marriage ring.
The Head of Pediatrics and Child Health at the Tamale Teaching Hospital (TTH), Professor Alhassan Abdul Mumin has disclosed that there have been five suspected deaths due to Measles at the health facility.
Speaking in an interview on Joy FM’s Top Story on Friday, he explained that “the only reason we still call them suspected cases is that we do not have the laboratory results up to now.”
“We have five cases we admitted with suspected measles. The suspected measles have all the features that you will document for a child or a patient that has measles,” he said.
He noted that “there are still cases that are pending since November last year that we do not have the results back from the testing laboratory.”
“So actually, we do have mortality even if they are not confirmed because laboratory results are not available,” he added.
His assertion is contrary to Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu’s claim that no death related to Measles has been recorded.
“It is important to correct the erroneous impression that there have been deaths from Measles in Ghana recently. For the avoidance of doubt, there have been no deaths from the recently recorded spike in Measles cases. Indeed there have been no deaths since 2003, though we have recorded cases annually,” the Health Minister assured in a press briefing on Tuesday.
But the Head of Pediatrics and Child Health at the Tamale Teaching Hospital insists that some children have died from the disease.
According to him, this is not the first time he has seen cases of Measles.
He said in 2013, there was a mini outbreak of measles at Tamale in his 12 years of service and he helped to manage the situation.
“I have been in Tamale for the last 12 years … so I know what a case of Measles looks like from the features that they present with and the case definition leaves nothing for ambiguity. So when you see a suspected case of Measles, you are only waiting to get the laboratory confirmation and you can now say that this is a confirmed case of Measles,” he explained.
He, however, stated that the government might have made that comment due to the absence of the laboratory confirmation results.
The key suspect in the Ashaiman murder case has been grabbed according to the Ghana Police Service.
In a release on Friday, the Police noted that the suspects were arrested through a sustained intelligence-led operation.
“The Police after a week of sustained intelligence-led operation have arrested the key suspects involved in the murder of Imoro Sherrif, the soldier who was found dead at Taifa Ashiaman on 4th March, 2023,” the release stated.
It would be recalled that on Saturday, March 4, 2023, a young soldier was murdered at Ashaiman Taifa.
His death however angered the military for which reason in the early hours of Tuesday, March 7, some military personnel invaded Ashaiman and brutalised some residents in a search for the murderers of their colleague.
They also took some of the residents away for interrogation. Most of them have since been released as of Friday.
The MP for the area then condemned the act by the military men.
According to him, although the killing of the soldier was a dastardly act, “we cannot take the laws into our hands whether we are lawmakers or security agencies.”
However, the Ghana Armed Forces says the operation was merely a swoop in a man-hunt for some criminals and not for vengeance.
According to GAF, “the military operation, which was sanctioned by the Military High Command, was NOT to avenge the killing of the soldier but rather to fish out the perpetrators of the heinous crime.”
They added that their “swoop” had led to the arrest of about 184 suspects aged between 21 and 47 years old and they have since handed them over to the military police who will subsequently send them over to the Ghana Police Service for screening and further action.
In a related development, the Minister of Defence, Dominic Nitiwul has described the incident as regrettable.
According to him, in shaping a nation, it is always difficult to ensure that there is absolute peace due to the inevitability of such unfortunate incidents as happened in Ashaiman.
Meanwhile, he has asserted that the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament together with the Ministry of Defense and the Military High Command will pay a visit to the Ashaiman community on Thursday, March 16.
The Police Administration says it has arrested key suspects in the murder of Sheriff Imoro, a soldier at Ashaiman.
In a release on Friday, the Police noted that the suspects were arrested through a sustained intelligence-led operation.
“The Police after a week of sustained intelligence-led operation have arrested the key suspects involved in the murder of Imoro Sherrif, the soldier who was found dead at Taifa Ashiaman on 4th March, 2023,” the release stated.
It would be recalled that on Saturday, March 4, 2023, a young soldier was murdered at Ashaiman Taifa.
His death however angered the military for which reason in the early hours of Tuesday, March 7, some military personnel invaded Ashaiman and brutalised some residents in a search for the murderers of their colleague.
They also took some of the residents away for interrogation. Most of them have since been released as of Friday.
The MP for the area then condemned the act by the military men.
According to him, although the killing of the soldier was a dastardly act, “we cannot take the laws into our hands whether we are lawmakers or security agencies.”
However, the Ghana Armed Forces says the operation was merely a swoop in a man-hunt for some criminals and not for vengeance.
According to GAF, “the military operation, which was sanctioned by the Military High Command, was NOT to avenge the killing of the soldier but rather to fish out the perpetrators of the heinous crime.”
They added that their “swoop” had led to the arrest of about 184 suspects aged between 21 and 47 years old and they have since handed them over to the military police who will subsequently send them over to the Ghana Police Service for screening and further action.
In a related development, the Minister of Defence, Dominic Nitiwul has described the incident as regrettable.
According to him, in shaping a nation, it is always difficult to ensure that there is absolute peace due to the inevitability of such unfortunate incidents as happened in Ashaiman.
Meanwhile, he has asserted that the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament together with the Ministry of Defense and the Military High Command will pay a visit to the Ashaiman community on Thursday, March 16.
After the burning of a 82-year-old man last month outside a mosque in west London, detectives have made a photograph of a man they want to speak to public.
The victim was allegedly drenched in a substance thought to be petrol before being set ablaze with a lighter at around 8 o’clock on February 27. The Metropolitan Police has issued a photo of the individual in question.
Before carrying out the attack, the suspect, according to detectives, spoke to the victim for about five minutes as they both exited the West London Islamic Centre on Singapore Road in Ealing.
He then walked away. The 82-year-old was taken to hospital, where he received treatment for severe burns to his face and arms.
The suspect talked to the victim for around five minutes before dousing him in a flammable liquid and setting him on fire (Piucture: Metropolitan Police)
He said: ‘I know this will be an incredibly shocking incident for the community and we are carrying out a full investigation into what happened.
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‘Understandably, there is a great deal of local concern in the wake of this incident and local officers have been carrying out reassurance patrols daily at the mosque.
‘We are continuing to work alongside the West London Islamic Centre who have been very supportive of our investigation and have been assisting us with our inquiries.
The incident took place outside the West London Islamic Centre in Ealing on February 27 (Picture: Google)
‘A key part of that is identifying the man in the image we have released.
‘I would also urge anyone who witnessed this incident and has not yet spoken to police to please get in touch.’
Lithuania’s military intelligence service has warned that Russia’s war against Ukraine, which was formerly only anticipated to last a few months, could continue for another two years.
Moscow still possesses a stockpile of Cold War-era weaponry, according to the secret agency, which it might deploy to “do enormous damage” to Ukraine.
Elegijus Paulavicius, the head of military intelligence, told reporters that Russia had been acquiring weapons and equipment throughout the lengthy Cold War.
‘We estimate that (its) resources would last for another two years of a war of the same intensity as today.’
Western officials have struggled to put a number on how much equipment Russia has (Picture: TASS)
Paulavicius, the head of the Second Investigation Department, added that the agency’s figure is based on Russia receiving no support from other countries.
‘How long Russia is able to wage the war will also depend on the support for Russia’s military from states such as Iran and North Korea,’ he said, Reuters reported.
Fears are already mounting that China could provide Russia with ‘lethal’ weapons, while Iran has long faced accusations of sending the country drones.
The colonel’s estimate is in contrast to the Pentagon’s which last year expected the conflict to peter out this year as Russia’s equipment wears out.
Paulavicius was speaking in Vilnius as he announced a new report that suggested support in Russia for the war ‘is not as big as the regime’s propaganda tried to make it seem’.
‘Dissatisfaction with the regime’s policies is currently taking a passive form: mostly avoiding mobilisation, complaining about poor provision and disarray in the army,’ the document said.
Whether or not Russia’s allies – or those claiming impartiality – hand Vladimir Putin more weapons could be a game-changer (Picture: AP)
If Vladimir Putin issues another mobilisation decree or suffers even more losses on the battlefield, this ‘would have negative consequences for the stability of the regime’.
Data on how much weaponry and equipment Russia has is slim. One estimate places the monetary value of it all at more than $17,500,000,000.
It’s unclear how many military aircraft, helicopters, tanks, boats and other vehicles the Kremlin has at its disposal. Though the monitoring group UAWAR places the number of artillery systems Russia has at 10.
Russia has lost about half of its total number of modern tanks in the past year of the war, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimated last month.
Though, the military think-tank said Russia still has thousands of older tanks in storage ready to be deployed.
A Public Health and Patients Safety Expert, Dr Elorm Otchi has renewed calls for government to prioritise healthcare in the country.
He says the shortage of childhood vaccines is due to government’s failure to prioritise health care.
According to him, although the Ghana Health Service (GHS) says delivery of quality health care is paramount, it does not demonstrate that.
“Healthcare should be prioritised. We are saying Ghana Health Service, their key slogan is health is wealth, isn’t it?
“So, if health is wealth, and we are thinking of all of this economic mess that we have created and are grappling with, I mean if we should prioritize health, probably we will be able to get ourselves out of this mess,” he said.
Speaking on JoyNews’ The Pulse on Friday, he explained that although there have been discussions for Ghana to increase its healthcare budget from the 8% to at least 15% ,much has not been done about it.
Earlier on March 10, the Health Minister, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, addressing the Parliament, said $6.4 million has been paid to UNICEF to deliver vaccines to Ghana.
The Minister said the vaccines are expected to be delivered between two to three weeks.
On the back of this, Dr Otchi stressed that if there were enough funds for the health sector, the shortage could have been avoided.
Outlining steps to address the situation, he said “the Ministry led by the Minister should take responsibility for the issue and be upfront.
“Secondly, we are saying that government should prioritise health care, because it is more in the mouth than in action,” he said.
Meanwhile, he has advised parents with newborns to hold fast to their faith and not unnecessarily expose their kids.
“As a Christian, for parents, I will say that one thing is praying to God. Second is also the prevention and how they expose their babies in this period is key.
“See, because they don’t have to necessarily be exposing the kids and their babies, especially to visitors, and then to the environment.
“I think that becomes a primary duty and our primary responsibility where they are carrying their children to, who is holding them,” he told host, Blessed Sogah.
He however appealed to the general public to keep health workers in their prayers.
“We also have to be praying for our healthcare workers. We’ll be dealing with the irresponsibility of state actors because our facilities are going to be flooded.
“We’re going to be dealing with COVID and its complications, Lassa fever and its complications and then measles and its complications, polio and its complications, diphtheria and tuberculosis and all the complications from newborns, children and infants,” he added.
People with knowledge of the situation claim that Saudi Arabia is relying on the United States for security assurances and assistance with its civilian nuclear program in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel, setting up a crucial decision that could change the Middle East’s political landscape.
The conversations are ongoing, and it was unclear exactly how any agreement might be structured if it ever materializes.
Several members of Congress, who have urged the Biden administration to downgrade Washington’s ties with Riyadh, would undoubtedly be adamantly opposed to increasing security guarantees for Saudi Arabia.
Still, President Joe Biden has placed importance on normalizing ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who believe better relations between the two nations could help increase security in the Middle East. Israel and Saudi Arabia have been cultivating unofficial ties for several years, though remain without official diplomatic relations.
“The better the relations between Israel and their Arab neighbors, the better for everybody,” Biden said Friday at the end of a speech about the economy.
Israel has already secured diplomatic agreements with other Arab nations, including Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The Abraham Accords were a signature achievement of the Trump administration and Biden has vowed to build upon them, particularly as Iran’s nuclear program advances.
A spokesman for the US National Security Council declined to confirm Saudi Arabia was seeking security guarantees from the US, which were reported earlier by the Wall Street Journal.
Instead, John Kirby, the strategic communications coordinator at the NSC, pointed to accomplishments Biden secured when he visited Israel and Saudi Arabia over the summer.
“The President’s trip to the region accomplished a lot,” said Kirby, citing an agreement on contested Red Sea islands and a recent announcement by Oman it would allow Israeli overflights.
“We’re going to keep that diplomacy going,” he said.
The State Department did not reply to a request for comment. The Israeli Embassy in Washington had no comment.
The consequences of a US-brokered agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia could be widespread. It would throw into doubt the future of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which has seen renewed violence in recent weeks under Israel’s right-wing government.
US officials also believe normalizing relations would provide heft to a regional counterweight against Iran, which has advanced its nuclear enrichment over the last year.
Last year, Biden promised Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences” after the Saudi-led OPEC+ oil cartel unexpectedly announced it would cut production, though the Biden administration has no plans to take proactive steps to punish – let alone significantly reorient its posture toward – the oil-rich Middle East kingdom.
On Friday, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced that they had agreed to reestablish diplomatic ties after seven years of hostility, in a deal between regional archrivals that could have wide-ranging implications for the Middle East.
Riyadh and Tehran plan to reopen their embassies in an agreement mediated by China, a joint statement by Saudi Arabia and Iran said on Friday.
Kirby said Saudi officials had kept the White House informed on the talks as they progressed. But he downplayed Beijing’s role in brokering the agreement, saying the roadmap to reestablishing ties also included talks in Iraq and Oman.
Before the COP28 conference, which starts on November 30 in Dubai and is attended by approximately 200 nations, the ministers of the 27 EU member states endorsed a statement outlining their diplomatic priorities.
The EU document stated that “the transition to a climate neutral economy will involve the worldwide phase-out of unabated fossil fuels,” noting the scientific agreement that such a move is required to prevent further severe climate change.
“The EU will systematically promote and call for a global move towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels well ahead of 2050”, it said, adding that global fossil fuel consumption should peak in the near term.
Europe is in the midst of transforming its energy system to meet climate targets and end decades of reliance on Russian fossil fuels.
The text said countries should combine the two aims and use renewable energy or energy savings – rather than fossil fuels – to replace Russian energy.
“There is no need for a one-to-one replacement of former Russian natural gas import volumes,” it said.
Some countries are hoping this year’s COP28 summit could secure a global deal to phase out fossil fuels, which emit planet-heating pollution. They want this to include not only coal, as agreed at previous UN climate talks, but also oil and gas.
More than 80 countries, including the EU, supported an Indian proposal to do this at last year’s summit, but Saudi Arabia and other oil and gas-rich nations opposed it.
EU countries approved their climate text two weeks later than planned, owing to a spat among countries over whether it should promote nuclear energy.
The final version scrubbed some wording that countries had disagreed on, but said that alongside renewable energy, EU diplomacy will promote sustainable “low-carbon technologies” – a phrase that often refers to nuclear energy.
Another bleak story was playing out in the background as Russian missiles descended on Ukraine in February of last year: foreign students, largely African and Asian, who were trying to flee to neighboring countries described experiencing prejudice and segregation at the country’s borders.
At the time, a medical student from Africa told CNN that at a Polish-Ukrainian border post, she and other foreigners were instructed to get off a public transport bus and stand aside while Ukrainian citizens were the only ones left on the vehicle.
At the time, the Ukrainian Border Guard Service informed CNN that the claims of segregation at the borders were unfounded.
More than 70,000 international students were studying in Ukraine when the war began, many of them attracted by its strong reputation for medical courses and tuition, with expenses much lower than in programs in other Western nations.
One year on, some of the students tell CNN they are stuck in limbo, unable to continue their education. Others say they are being forced to head back to the war-torn country in order to graduate.
Korrine Sky, 26, a British-Zimbabwean citizen who was in the second year of a medical degree at Ukraine’s Dnipro Medical Institute when the war broke out, is one of those whose studies are now on hold.
Speaking to CNN last month, Sky said she was among those who faced segregation at the Ukrainian-Romanian border as they tried to flee.
“We were kicked out of the initial car queue that we were in and told to go stand in a pedestrian queue that was only Black people, Asian people and Middle Eastern people… it took like 10 hours and we knew it was racism because everyone who was White was expedited to go first,” Sky said.
While hundreds of students were evacuated from Ukraine by their own countries, some stayed in the bordering European nations to which they had fled.
Many are yet to be grantedrefugee status, said Sky, who says she has been in contact with some foreign students.
“Some were given between six months to one-year visas. As of February and March, a lot of the visas that they were granted at the start of the war, will be running out. So, they’ll be facing deportation. A lot of them have decided to go back to Ukraine,” Sky told CNN in a phone call from her home in Leicester, England.
“There’s also a large portion of students who’ve now gone back to Ukraine because their universities weren’t offering transcripts unless they return,” she added.
“I got to speak to Ukraine’s Minister of Education in September last year at an Education Summit in New York,” she said.
“His response was that the Ukrainian schooling system is quite old-fashioned in the sense that a lot of these transcripts are actual physical documents domiciled in the Dean’s office. So, they’re working to digitalize transcripts, so that people can access them online… but I never heard anything,” said Sky.
CNN has contacted the Ministry of Education and the ministerfor comment.
Sky now campaigns by writing letters to policy makers and governing bodies to get equal access to higher education for refugee students.
After fleeing the conflict, she said she hoped to complete her education at other European universities that had offered a place to international students displaced by the Russian war.
“There were articles from different universities saying that they were offering scholarships and different opportunities for students who are studying in Ukraine. We were optimistic that maybe we’ll be able to transfer since we can’t go back to Ukraine,” Sky said.
However, her hopes were soon dashed after she discovered the scholarship opportunities were reserved mainly for Ukrainian students.
“That’s the same sentiments we’d had when we were trying to get on the buses and the trains (while fleeing the war) … It was Ukrainians only. No one seems to even have a single bit of empathy that our lives have been completely disrupted,” she said.
Sky added that back in the UK, she wrote letters to members of parliament and to universities to try to continue her studies but has been unsuccessful so far.
She puts it down to compassion fatigue due to the current state of the world, saying “There’s a lot going on in the world at the moment… so we are lower down in the list of priorities.”
Some of the foreign students are now protesting because some Ukrainian universities are mandating them to return in March to complete exams before they can graduate.
“Organizers of the exams are perfectly aware of the risks associated with traveling to Ukraine as a result of daily missile attacks and the war. No insurance is currently working in Ukraine, and there are no direct flights to Ukraine, so most of the students from non-EU countries cannot even arrive in Ukraine before the exam,” a statement signed by the students said.
Students say they are also directed to fill out a consent form taking responsibility for all risks involved in traveling to Ukraine.
“I am aware of the risks associated with crossing the state border of Ukraine and staying in Ukraine while taking the integrated test-exam ‘KROK 2’ … I am aware that I am responsible for my safety and life during my stay in Ukraine,” stated part of the consent form issued by Kyiv Medical University to its students, andseen by CNN.
CNN has contacted Kyiv Medical University for comment.
Final-year Nigerian medical student Oluwayemisi Folu-Ojo, 23, told CNN the Ternopil National Medical University in western Ukraine is one of at least five Ukrainian schools asking students to return to campus.
The exam known as Krok 2 is part of a series of qualifying exams for final-year medical students.
It was initially waived by Ukraine’s health ministry after the war began, says 25-year-old Adetomiwa Adeniyi, also from Nigeria, who was one semester ahead of Folu-Ojo in Ternopil when the war broke out and only had a few months of studies remaining.
“I was able to do the final three to four months online and we had a graduation ceremony online,” Adeniyi told CNN. “For our set, they waived the (Krok 2) exam. We only wrote school and state exams online.”
In an email to CNN, the office of the Dean of International Students Faculty at the Ternopil National Medical University said the exam was being organized by Ukraine’s health ministry and not the school.
“The aforementioned Ministry is organizing the exam on March 14, 2023, for those graduates of medical universities who are currently in Ukraine or have the opportunity to arrive in Ukraine on this date,” the dean’s office said, adding that, “for those international students, who cannot come to our country, the Ministry plans to organize the Step 2 exam at a later date, outside of Ukraine.”
No timeline was provided for facilitating the exam outside Ukraine.
CNN has contacted Ukraine’s ministry of health for further comments.
Some who graduated online from university in Ukraine say they are not faring much better.
Adeniyi is unable to practice as a doctor in Nigeria because Nigeria’s medical council (MDCN) does not recognize medical degrees acquired digitally.
He says he might be forced to repeat his final year in a Nigerian university or find a country abroad that will allow him to practice.
For fourth-year medical student Oyindamola Morenikeji from Nigeria, “everything is just at a standstill.”
“It feels like everything is on hold; my education, my plans for my career, my future… There aren’t a lot of choices available to me for now,” she told CNN of her failed attempts to transfer to another European school.
The 23-year-old said her family did not find it easy to fund her education in Ukraine, which she said cost around $4,000 per year.
“I could see that they were denying themselves quite a lot of things to send me to school because they were trying to fulfill my dream of becoming a doctor. They took loans quite a few times,” she said.
Morenikeji says she is considering applying to a Nigerian nursing school and starting all over again but is worried about the financial toll on her family.
“They had already thought they’d paid my fees up to the fourth year with two more years to go. But now, they have to pay for extra three to four years of school fees, so it’s like they are starting all over again. It feels like when they were close to the final point, everything came crashing,” she said.
A new research outlines a method through which scientists can capture carbon pollution that warms the earth, convert it to sodium bicarbonate, and store it in the oceans.
According to the authors of the study, which was published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, the method could be up to three times more effective than current carbon capture technologies.
Tackling the climate crisis means drastically reducing the burning of fossil fuels, which releases planet-heating pollution. But because humans have already pumped so much of this pollution into the atmosphere and are unlikely to sufficiently reduce emissions in the near term, scientists say we also need to remove it from the air.
Nature does this – forests and oceans, for example, are valuable carbon sinks – but not quickly enough to keep pace with the amounts humans are producing. So we have turned to technology.
One method is to capture carbon pollution directly at the source, for example from steel or cement plants.
But another way, which this study focuses on, is “direct air capture.” This involves sucking carbon pollution directly out of the atmosphere and then storing it, often by injecting it into the ground.
The problem with direct air capture is that while carbon dioxide may be a very potent planet-heating gas, its concentrations are very small – it makes up about 0.04% of air. This means removing it directly from the air is challenging and expensive.
It’s a “significant hurdle,” Arup SenGupta, a professor at Lehigh University and a study author, told CNN.
Even the biggest facilities can only remove relatively small amounts and it costs several hundred dollars to remove each ton of carbon.
Climeworks’ direct air removal project in Iceland is the largest facility, according to the company, and can capture up to 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. That’s equivalent to the carbon pollution produced by fewer than 800 cars over a year.
The new technique laid out in the study can help tackle those problems, said SenGupta.
The team have used copper to modify the absorbent material used in direct air capture. The result is an absorbent “which can remove CO2 from the atmosphere at ultra-dilute concentration at a capacity which is two to three times greater than existing absorbents,” SenGupta said.
This material can be produced easily and cheaply and would help drive down the costs of direct air capture, he added.
Once the carbon dioxide is captured, it can then be turned into sodium bicarbonate – baking soda – using seawater and released into the ocean at a small concentration.
The oceans “are infinite things,” SenGupta said. “If you put all the CO2 from the atmosphere, emitted every day – or every year – into the ocean, the increase in concentration would be very, very minor,” he said.
SenGupta’s idea is that direct air capture plants can be located offshore, giving them access to abundant amounts of seawater for the process.
Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, who wasnot involved in the study, told CNN that the chemistry was “novel and elegant.”
The process is a modification of one we already know, he said, “which is easier to understand, scale-up and develop than something totally new.”
But there may be regulatory hurdles to surmount. “Disposing of large tonnages of sodium bicarbonate in the ocean could be legally defined as ‘dumping,’ which is banned by international treaties,” Haszeldine said.
Others remain concerned about negative impacts on the oceans, which are already under pressure from climate change, pollution and other human activity.
Peter Styring, professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at the University of Sheffield, told CNN: “Unless you’ve got a full eco-toxic study, then you don’t know what it’s going to do, even at small concentrations.”
Direct air capture also remains expensive and inefficient, Styring said. “This is a big scale problem. Why would you capture from the atmosphere when you’ve got so much coming out of power stations and industrial plants? It just makes sense to go for the high concentrations first,” he said.
Some scientists have expressed concerns that a focus on technology to remove carbon pollution could distract from policies to reduce fossil fuel burning, or could give polluters license to carry on polluting.
But given the scale of the climate crisis, there is a big push from governments and international bodies to scale up this technology.
More research will be needed to understand how the method works at scale, Haszeldine said. But it’s promising, he added, saying “the world needs lots of this type of discovery.”
SenGupta said the technology is ready to be taken out of the lab and trialed. “This is the time to go forward and do something in maybe two or three different places around the world. Let other people get involved, find faults, improve on it, and then proceed accordingly,” he said.
Germany was in disbelief on Friday when a shooter at a Jehovah’s Witness center in Hamburg killed six people, including an unborn child, before killing himself as police stormed the premises.
Hamburg’s state prosecutor reported that the attacker, a 35-year-old German national, had previously belonged to the Jehovah Witnesses movement.
After the shooter opened fire on an event Thursday night that was attended by 50 people, German police are still looking into a potential motive. At a press conference on Friday, Interior Minister Andy Grote stated that a mass shooting like this had never occurred in Hamburg.
The gunman acted alone, Grote said. ”There could have been more victims if police had not intervened so quickly,” he said.
The mother of the unborn baby that was killed survived her gunshot injuries, Hamburg police chief Matthias Tresp told reporters. Police said that four men and two women – all German nationals between the ages of 33 and 60 – died in the attack.
Eight people were wounded, four of them seriously. Police said that among them are six women and two men; six are German nationals, one injured person is from Uganda and one from Ukraine. The victims are not related to the suspected perpetrator, Tresp said.
The suspect left the Jehovah’s Witnesses community about 18 months ago, “apparently not on good terms,” Thomas Radszuweit, a Hamburg security official, told reporters Friday. He was a 35-year-old German national, identified only as Philipp F. in line with German privacy laws.
Philipp F. was a former member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but it is unclear if he was excluded from the community or left voluntarily. The suspected shooter was not previously known to authorities in Hamburg, according to Radszuweit. Why the suspect went on the shooting rampage is as yet unknown, he added, and there is no indication of a political motive.
Meanwhile Ralf Peter Anders, spokesman for the Hamburg prosecution’s office, said there was “no indication of a terrorist background” to the attack.
Ralf Martin Meyer, Hamburg’s chief of police, said investigations were ongoing into the mental state of the suspect, adding that it was possible the suspect suffered from mental illness. Meyer said he had been in legal possession of a semi-automatic pistol since December 2022. During the attack the gunman shot nine magazines of ammunition.
Messages of condolence poured in from politicians and religious leaders, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz denouncing the “brutal act of violence.”
Police were called to the scene at 9:04 p.m. local time (3:04 p.m. ET) Thursday night, Grote said. The first teams arrived at 9:08 p.m. and entered the building three minutes later.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany said in a statement: “The religious community is deeply saddened by the horrific attack on its members at the Kingdom Hall in Hamburg after a religious service.”
One unidentified witness described the moment the shots rang out in the Thursday evening attack. “We heard shots,” they said as quoted by Reuters news agency. “There were 12 continuous shots. Then we saw how people were taken away in black bags.”
A neighbor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses center in Hamburg told CNN affiliate RTL Germany Friday: “I heard … Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And I wondered, ‘who is still working with the jackhammer now?’ That was my first idea because you don’t hear any gunshots [around here].”
Another neighbor told RTL: “We were not at home at all. Our son called us that there had been a shooting across the street at the Jehovah’s Witnesses and he had even filmed parts of it, thinking it was a scare gun.”
Chancellor Scholz led politicians in denouncing the murder spree in the northern German city.
“Several members of a Jehovah community fell victim to a brutal act of violence last night. My thoughts are with them and their loved ones,” he wrote on Twitter.
He later said the country has been left “stunned” by the shooting. Speaking at a trade fair in Munich Friday, the German chancellor highlighted the devastating impact of the “terrible incident” which occurred in his hometown of Hamburg. “We are stunned by this violence,” Scholz said.
EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson expressed her sorrow, writing on Twitter: “A shocking attack on a church in GrossBorstel, Hamburg last night. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.
“Thanks to @PolizeiHamburg who responded to the attack immediately and with incredible bravery.”
French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed his condolences. “Terrible news from Hamburg,” he said on Twitter Friday. ”I send France’s condolences to the relatives of the victims and to all our German friends. Our thoughts are with them.”
Footage from the scene on Thursday night showed numerous armed police officers inside and around the Kingdom Hall while a helicopter flew overhead. A bomb disposal team was deployed at one point.
The streets around the place of worship were cordoned off, and police earlier warned of “extreme danger” in the area, the spokesperson added. Local residents were urged to stay indoors.
There is “no confirmed information on the motive for the crime,” police said on Twitter as they urged people not to share any unconfirmed assumptions.
Messages of support also came in from Hamburg’s religious communities.
“The news of this bloody crime in Hamburg-Alsterdorf is shocking and leaves me speechless… My deepest sympathy goes to the relatives of the victims,” Father Sascha-Philipp Geissler, a senior member of Hamburg’s Catholic diocese, said in a statement.
Shootings in Germany are not unheard of, though rarer than in the United States. According to statistics published by the country’s National Firearms Register in 2013, Germany has, per capita, the fourth-highest gun ownership of any nation. However, its strict laws mean they are largely kept out of the public eye.
German citizens require a weapons possession card to own or buy a gun and a weapons license to use or carry a loaded gun. Hunters do not need a weapons license as long as they have a hunting license.
Gun control laws in Germany have been further tightened in recent years after several shooting incidents. A new Weapons Act was introduced in 2003 after a school shooting in Erfurt that left 16 people dead.
In January 2022, at least one person was killed after a man opened fire on students in a lecture hall at Heidelberg University in southwestern Germany.
And in 2020, a mass shooting at two shisha bars in Hanau killed several people.
After a train struck a public bus in the nation’s commercial center on Thursday, killing six people and wounding scores more, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu said that he is temporarily suspending his reelection campaign.
According to a statement from Lagos state emergency services, the tragedy occurred at a bus stop in the Ikeja neighborhood of the city of around 20 million inhabitants.
Sanwo-Olu tweeted on Thursday that there were 85 passengers on the bus, including state employees.
“Lagos is in a state of mourning and for the next 3 days, I am suspending all campaign activities. All flags will be flown at half mast and tomorrow all civil servants will work till 12 noon before returning home to be with their loved ones during this trying time,” the governor further said in a series of tweets while calling for blood donations to treat the injured.
Also on Thursday, the country’s President Muhammadu Buhari described the accident as “distressing and extremely sad.”
“The accident at the level crossing involving a train and BRT staff bus is distressing and extremely sad. I pray for the souls of the deceased and quick recovery of the injured,” Buhari said while commending Lagos authorities for intervening swiftly at the scene of the collision.
Security guard Ubong Okon witnessed the aftermath of the crash, which happened from about 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. local time (0600 to 0700 GMT).
“I came out to open the gate, then I saw the train and the bus, I looked inside the bus, there were lots of passengers inside, I went inside and saw people with injuries, there was blood everywhere, then I started to help get people inside the bus out.”
Traffic jams are part of daily life in Lagos, where most people drive with little regard for road and safety rules.
In Africa’s most populous nation, many roads are poorly maintained and riven with potholes, leading to accidents that claim thousands of lives every year.
Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika said in a statement that he has directed Nigeria’s safety investigation agency to look into the cause of the accident.
Elizabeth Frances Sey, the first female to obtain a degree from the University of Ghana, graduated in 1953 – just 5 years after the establishment of the school. But it took 70 years to get a woman to lead the same university which had been producing female graduates for 65 years.
At the students’ front, it took 59 years after the establishment of the University to get a female elected as leader of the Students Representative Council. Since then, two more have occupied that high office, even though one’s tenure was interim.
The decades of female absence in positions of influence within the University and even outside of it, are evidence of the subtle patriarchal wiring of the Ghanaian society. For instance, in Parliament, out of 275 members, there are only 35 female MPs. The figure represents only 12.75% of the entire Parliament
In the past decade or so, there has been a significant reversal of this rather unequal outlook of representation and decision-making in Ghana. Joyce Adeline Bamford-Addo, first woman Speaker of Parliament, Justice Rtd. Georgina Theodora Wood, first woman Chief Justice, Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, first woman Chief of Staff, and a host of other powerful women who were the first females to have occupied such roles.
Globally, efforts are being made to increase the number of women playing important roles in various disciplines. In politics and governance, sports, and corporate leadership, deliberate efforts are being made to encourage women’s participation.
At the University of Ghana, an affirmative action policy was introduced at the student level to increase female enrolment, especially in male-dominated programmes and staff positions. This, together with the conscious mentoring of young female academics and staff members, has been a major strategy employed by the University, even before the publication of a recent study on gender disparities in Ghana’s tertiary education system.
The study published by Kimberly Christel mentioned sexual harassment and an absence of female authority figures as contributory factors. It appears to me that these issues are being tackled head-on at the University of Ghana. The results of these efforts are beginning to be seen, at least in more ways than one.
Apart from being the first and only tertiary institution to have all of its current principal officers as women, the University of Ghana currently has about 50% of its central administration heads as females. The University is also seeing an increasing number of females, heading its academic units.
In a more immediate impact of these efforts, the University of Ghana, which is the country’s biggest tertiary institution, has registered a higher female to male ratio for the first time in recent history. In the latest admission cycle, the University recorded a 51:49 female-to-male admissions ratio, exceeding its target set for female enrollment.
Partly due to the University’s equitable admission policy, many females are now able to pursue higher education in even some of the most male dominated courses.
I have met two brilliant ladies from the Information Technology and Computer Engineering departments – Angela and Alhassan.
Angela enrolled to study Information Technology with a grade point of 11; a programme that has just about 20% of its population currently being female.
Alhassan, on the other hand, gained admission to study Computer Engineering with a grade point of 12. At the moment, she is working with a multinational tech company in Accra. Less than a quarter of students (22.1%) currently taking the Computer Engineering programme are females.
Without the affirmative action policy, Angela, Alhassan, and several thousands of other females might have had to rethink their career choices or at worst, forever deal with what would have been an inconsiderate system.
This, in my opinion, makes a compelling case for University of Ghana’s commitment to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 which calls for actions to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education.
What other strategies have been adopted?
In 2006, the University established the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA), a unit mandated to promote advocacy and initiate policies on gender in the University. This has greatly aided “efforts towards gender mainstreaming,” Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo says.
In keeping with its goal of becoming a top-tier tertiary institution, the University adopted about nine strategic priorities almost a decade ago. Ensuring “gender and diversity are enshrined in all aspects of its institutional culture, in a way that sets the example for all other academic and non-academic institutions to follow”, was one of those priorities.
In a few days, University authorities will take another step in its commitment to increasing access to females through the launch of a gender policy.
“Since the female gender has been the underrepresented gender for many years, there has naturally been an emphasis on making sure that females feel comfortable in the university and harassment of all kinds are minimized,” Prof. Amfo expressed.
Almost a decade ago, the University adopted a sexual harassment and misconduct policy as part of efforts to create a safe space for females within its community. This policy also established an anti-sexual harassment committee which conducts investigations and issues sanctions against culprits.
What are the results?
Currently, there are more female undergraduate students at the University than males.
At the master’s and PhD. levels, things are different. Again, there are more male students with disabilities at the University than female students.
There is a steady rise in the number of females pursuing programmes such as Material Science and Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Sports and Physical Cultural Studies and Information Technology, and Computer Engineering.
Female enrollment in Midwifery, Family and Consumer Sciences, and Nutrition and Dietetics, are at their highest, data from the University indicates.
Despite these, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Amfo, believes that even though the University is a leader in fostering a gender-balanced atmosphere, there is still much work to be done.
“We need to work towards having more female role models across disciplines and in leadership positions to continue to inspire younger women. We still have a lot more male lecturers and senior administrators and professionals and more in the senior ranks. The current optics of having females in significant leadership positions also help in motivating the females.”
The way forward
It is commendable that Ghana’s oldest and largest University has demonstrated such a strong commitment to foster a gender-balanced community because it has paved the way and showed other academic and non-academic organizations that it is feasible.
Various stakeholders must come together in support of the University to achieve even more as it seeks and chart this noble path.
Also, at the national level, there is the need to move away from the rhetoric and start implementing policies that will create safe and enabling spaces for women to hold high offices.
DISCLAIMER: Independentghana.com will not be liable for any inaccuracies contained in this article. The views expressed in the article are solely those of the author’s, and do not reflect those of The Independent Ghana
The author holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication Studies from the Ghana Institute of Journalism. He is a fact-checker with Dubawa Ghana and a Civil/Public Servant.
The present ban on same-sex relationships, according to legislators, does not go far enough, thus a bill that would make identifying as LGBTQ a crime was taken up by Uganda’s parliament on Thursday.
Same-sex relationships are punished by up to a life sentence in jail in this socially conservative and religious country in east Africa.
More than 30 African nations forbid same-sex relationships, but if Uganda’s bill is approved, it would appear to be the first to make it a crime to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ).
The proposed Ugandan law was introduced as a private lawmaker’s bill and aims to allow the country to fight “threats to the traditional, heterosexual family”, according to a copy seen by Reuters.
It punishes with up to 10 years in prison any person who “holds out as a lesbian, gay, transgender, a queer or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female”.
It also criminalizes the “promotion” of homosexuality and “abetting” and “conspiring” to engage in same-sex relations.
The law is similar in some ways to a law passed in 2013 that stiffened some penalties and criminalized lesbianism. It drew widespread international condemnation before it was struck down by a domestic court on procedural grounds.
After the new bill was read in parliament, Speaker Anita Among sent it to a committee for scrutiny and public hearings before it is brought back to the House for debate and a vote.
Among urged members of parliament to reject intimidation, referencing reported threats by some Western countries to impose travel bans against those involved in passing the law.
“This business of intimidating that ‘you will not go to America’, what is America?” she said.
An investigation by a parliamentary committee ordered in January into reports of alleged promotion of homosexuality in schools has already sparked a wave of discrimination and violence against members of the LGBTQ community, activists say.
Benson, 55, who is a mother of five was very vocal on diverse complications that could arise from surgery when she made an appearance on Adwuma Adwuma with Felicia Osei on Onua 95.1 FM.
She explained that personally she did not have qualms with women who went in for surgery but she would rather stick to exercising as its more healthier in the long run.
“If you’ve given birth and you want to go lift your breast because you have a number of children…Madam go and do it,” Stephanie Benson—who previously had a double mastectomy procedure after battling cancer — advised “My daughter who called me earlier was in a famous girl band. She had a slightly flatter breast and she wanted to uplift it but i told her if she gives birth it will sag again She does think about it again if you look at my page we exercise together.”
“I think health is everything. We need to be mindful of certain things,” she added “Every surgery has its side effect. I feel if you are done with childbirth and you want to change something, go ahead.”
Stephanie also known as Princess Akua Ohenewaa is considered as one of the sexiest women in showbiz and she attributes it to her fitness lifestyle. The actress and entrepreneur was full of praise for exercising and admonished women to also take it seriously.
“If not for exercise, we won’t be here. Exercise does some wonders. People should not estimate it. I work out from home even after my hectic work schedule. After the age of 35 as a woman you need to lift some kind of weights. Any type of exercise is good. After you work out you feel so much better.”
The government has been urged to seek a comprehensive external debt restructuring with its creditors to help bring the country back on the path of debt sustainability, the Tax Justice Coalition Ghana has said.
That, the Coalition said, was the only way the country’s current debt and macroeconomic crisis could be addressed.
Addressing a news conference in Accra yesterday on the 2023 annual budget, the Chairman of Tax Justice Coalition Ghana, Mr Vitus A. Azeem, explained comprehensive debt restructuring as Ghana negotiating for all its debts to be forgiven by its external creditors.
He said the external debt restructuring had become necessary to bring stability to the Ghanaian economy.
The analysis on the 2023 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of government was done by the Tax Justice Coalition Ghana in collaboration with Actionaid, as part of an advocacy programme between the two organisations for a progressive tax regime for the country.
He said aside the numerous revenue and expenditure measures in the 2023 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, which will be adopted by government to address the country’s economic crisis, there was the need for the external debt restructuring.
Touching on the tax issues in the 2023 budget, Mr Azeem said though the proposals to freeze new tax waivers for foreign companies and to review tax exemption for free zones, mining and oil and gas companies, some of the proposed revenue measures in the budget pointed to the conclusion that Ghana’s tax system remained more regressive than progressive.
He said the tax measures, such as the increase in Value Added Tax, the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy), Communication Service Tax, would increase transport fares and food prices and worsen the country’s inflation.
“The Tax Justice Coalition Ghana calls on the government not to implement the 15 per cent VAT increase and totally scrap the E-Levy and focus more on implementing the more progressive taxation of income and property,” he said.
Mr Azeem suggested that the collection of property tax should be adopted at the National and not left to Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).
The Country Director of Actionaid, John Nkaw, said in the external debt restructuring, Ghana could negotiate for total debt forgiveness, cancellation or relief to give the country debt reprieve.
Touching on the issue of efficient and effective use of the country’s tax resources, he said government must invest the country’s revenue in social services, such as education, water and agriculture to help bring relief to the poor and vulnerable in society.
A Policy Analyst of ISODEC, Bernard Anaba, said debt forgiveness was not something new, stressing that under the Marshall Plan to develop Europe, most of Germany’s debt was forgiven by its creditors.
He said debt relief would help Ghana to start on a clean plate and bring the country on sustainable debt levels to bring development to the country.
The UN has unveiled a proposal to unload a rusty supertanker that has been anchored off the coast of Yemen for more than 30 years with 1 million barrels of oil.
A very large crude transporter was purchased by the UN to remove the oil from the FSO Facility in an effort to prevent what could turn out to be one of the largest environmental catastrophes in history.
Due to the crisis in Yemen, the 47-year-old tanker has not received maintenance since 2015, according to UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, who spoke at a conference on Thursday.
“A massive spill from the Safer would destroy pristine reefs, coastal mangroves and other sea life across the Red Sea, expose millions of people to highly polluted air, and cut off food, fuel and other life-saving supplies to Yemen, where 17 million people already need food aid,” the UN said on a website dedicated to the issue.
A cleanup from the oil spill would cost $20 billion and would affect 200,000 communities with their livelihoods “wiped out,” UN’s Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, David Gressly, said.
It could touch the African coast, it affect shipping and would cause damage in pristine waters that would not recover for 25 years, Gressly added.
The UN said the FSO Safer supertanker is holding four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez which is “enough to make it the 5th largest oil spill from a tanker in history.”
The new $55-million double hull crude carrier will attempt to move the oil off the FSO Safer in a ‘ship-to-ship’ transfer in May, Steiner said.
The operation has been described by Gressly as “high risk” and “highly complex.” “We’re not quite there yet,” Gressly said, adding that they have already mobilized $95 million for the project but need $34 million more to complete it.
Where the oil will end up after its removed is yet to be decided, but discussions are ongoing, Steiner added.
A breastfeeding woman was asked to leave the public gallery in the courtroom by an Australian judge, who later defended his action as “self-explanatory.”
According to CNN station 9News, Mark Gamble, a judge in the County Court of Victoria, informed the mother that she needed to leave because she might be “distracting for the jury” when she was feeding her kid under a cover and watching the trial.
The woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, reportedly told a regional newspaper that she felt horrified and degraded and began crying after leaving the Melbourne courtroom.
Naomi Hull of the Australian Breastfeeding Association told 9News she was “completely shocked” by the incident.
“It’s really disappointing to hear that this kind of thing is still happening,” she added.
Ingrid Stitt, minister for early childhood in the state of Victoria, said she understood the state’s attorney-general would talk to the courts about the issue, CNN affiliate 7News reported.
“I mean, it’s 2023 for goodness sake, and women should never (feel) that they can’t actually feed their child, which is perfectly natural and a pretty basic thing,” she said.
“We need to be able to make women feel that there’s nothing wrong with them caring for their child, including feeding their child in public places.”
Gamble later explained the decision to the jury, who were not in the courtroom when he asked the woman to leave.
“It should all be self-explanatory, members of the jury,” he said, according to 9News.
“What I said was this, and I am reading from the transcripts: ‘Madam, you will not be permitted to breastfeed a baby in court. I’m sorry. I will have to ask you to leave. It will be a distraction for the jury at the very least. Thank you,’” he added.
In 2016, the Australian Parliament changed its rules to allow female lawmakers to nurse their infants in the chamber, and in 2017, then-Queensland Sen. Larissa Waters became the first person to breastfeed in federal parliament.
According to the Australian Breastfeeding Association, “a mother’s right to breastfeed her child is protected by law both federally and in every State and Territory,” and under the country’s federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984, it is illegal to discriminate against a person either directly or indirectly on the grounds of breastfeeding.
In the state of Victoria, discrimination due to breastfeeding is illegal in the areas of “accommodation, clubs, education, employment, goods and services, selling and transferring land, and sport,” the association adds, though it does not mention courtrooms specifically.
China’s state-owned defense corporations have continued to do business with Russian defense enterprises that have been sanctioned over the past year, despite the fact that many of the world’s top economies have severed links with Moscow and the firms that are funding its ongoing attack on Ukraine.
Notwithstanding the terror Moscow has wreaked on Europe, according to customs documents examined by CNN, major corporations inside both nations’ enormous military-industrial complexes have maintained their long-standing links.
Records show that throughout 2022, through at least mid-November, Beijing-based defense contractor Poly Technologies sent at least a dozen shipments – including helicopter parts and air-to-ground radio equipment – to a state-backed Russian firm sanctioned by the US for its connection to leader Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Poly Technology’s long-term trade partner – Ulan Ude Aviation Plant, a purveyor of military-grade helicopters – also continued to send parts and several helicopters to the Beijing-based company last year, trade data show.
Most of the helicopter parts included in the shipments to Russia were labeled for use in the multipurpose Mi-171E helicopter, designed for transport and search and rescue. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China began importing this model of chopper from Russia more than 10 years ago.
Three shipments from Poly Technologies were labeled as including products for the operation or service of the Russian-made Mi-171SH, a military transport helicopter that can be equipped with weapons and has been used in Moscow’s operations in Ukraine.
There is no evidence that any of the goods exchanged are directly feeding Russia’s war.
The customs records came from two data sets. The first was provided by trade data firm Import Genius, whose information is collated by secondary sources from official Russian customs and shipment records.
Washington-based think tank C4ADS, which collates official customs records aggregated from multiple third-party providers, provided the second set.
CNN has not independently verified the data, which may provide a partial but not complete picture of the trade.
Military and security experts say the parts sent from the Chinese firm to Russia are fairly basic equipment for Russian-designed aircraft that could be part of existing contracts and standard business relationships between the companies.
But last year’s trade underscores enduring ties between key players in the state-backed defense sectors on both sides – relationships that had strengthened over the past decade as Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping developed their strategic alignment.
Experts say such well-established networks could be leveraged if Beijing were to provide direct, lethal aid for the Kremlin’s war effort.
Western leaders in recent weeks have warned China is considering that step. Beijing has denied this, derided the warning as a “smear,” and repeatedly defended its “normal” trade with Russia and rejected what it calls “unilateral” sanctions against Moscow.
Beijing and Moscow’s military ties have evolved dramatically since the height of the Cold War – a period marked by mutual hostility and ideological divergence.
While some frictions remain, the two authoritarian neighbors have grown close, especially under Putin and Xi, who together declared a “no limits” partnership just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.
That includes a growing security relationship.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a robust, but decidedly one-way weapons trade flourished in which Russia marketed its superior weaponry to China.
More recently, the rapid modernization of China’s military has begun to shift that dynamic.
In 2021, Putin boasted that the two countries were “developing together certain high-tech types of weapons,” according to Russian state media, and lauded their joint military exercises – which have also expanded in scope and geographic range.
On the frontlines of that relationship are the state-linked military contractors. Those are being integrated into an “an increasingly sophisticated supply chain,” according to Alex Gabuev, a senior fellow at the international think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Then came the Ukraine war.
So far, China has stepped carefully around sweeping Western penalties targeting those supporting Russia – although 10 Chinese companies have been hit by US restrictions related to the war.
But a major question for Western officials is whether existing defense relationships could be used by China to supply lethal aid for the Kremlin’s war effort, which is widely believed to be running low on ammunition and arms.
Last month CNN reported that US intelligence officials believe the Chinese government is considering sending drones and ammunition to Russia.
On March 7, China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang said that China “has not provided weapons to either side” of Russia’s war, and denounced US concerns in the matter as hypocritical.
Observers of Chinese foreign affairs say its leaders are well aware of the reputational and economic damage if it is perceived to be backing Moscow militarily – and many are skeptical Beijing would take such a step to aid a nuclear-armed Russia at this time.
“Russia is losing this war in general terms … but it’s not a loss that would lead to Putin’s demise and democratization of Russia, so I don’t see reasons for China now to do more than they are doing,” said Gabuev.
The goods traded between Chinese and Russian defense firms in the data reviewed by CNN are not the munitions that Russia’s military is thought to need most one year into its Ukraine onslaught. China is also not alone in continuing procurement from a Russia at war.
When asked by CNN about the shipments from China to sanctioned Russian firms, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was “unaware of the situation,” and that China “stand(s) firmly on the side of dialogue and peace.”
The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment from CNN.
But on February 27 its spokesman said Russia saw “no need to comment further” on claims that Russia asked China for military equipment which he said had already been refuted by Beijing.
Poly Technologies describes itself on its website as the core subsidiary of China Poly Group, a leading state-owned enterprise, “exclusively authorized by the Chinese central government for import/export of defense systems.”
Poly Technologies was sanctioned by the US in 2013 under rules targeting firms supplying Iran, North Korea and Syria, and again in January of last year for alleged missile proliferation. China Poly Group did not respond to a request for comment.
The company’s trade partner Ulan Ude Aviation Plant, a subsidiary of top state-owned manufacturer Russian Helicopters, which makes the widely used Mi-8/17 series helicopters long integral to Russian military transport, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Two other key companies appear in the customs data – China’s AVIC International Holding, controlled by state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, and Russia’s United Engine Corporation (UEC), which is part of state-owned defense giant Rostec.
Their trade involved Russian-designed jet engine parts, many of which were labeled for an engine used in Chinese fighter jets.
Shipments from AVIC International to UEC made through July last year were listed as contractual obligations under warranty, and export records show UEC shipping parts for the same engine model to China including as recently as December, according to data from Import Genius.
AVIC International and UEC did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal previously referenced shipments made from Poly Technologies and AVIC International Holding to Russian partners.
Report obtained by CNN shows Russia is getting military support from China
Washington’s stance is that any company supplying or operating within the Russian defense sector risks being sanctioned.
But China may not be too concerned about the transactions shown in the trade data reviewed by CNN, according to Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.
“This type of export has to be approved by the government. But given the nature of these parts and the fact that (Poly Technologies) has been under US sanction since 2013, the government may not see the need not to approve,” she said.
Some experts have raised questions about whether aviation parts coming from China to Russia – many of which are labeled as “used” or originating in Russia – could still be spare parts needed by a Russia at war.
Sun said it was no surprise Russia would continue fulfilling contracts for Chinese-purchased equipment, but warned goods going the opposite direction could be “reimported by Russia to supply their war attrition.”
It’s also unlikely that the full picture will ever be revealed.
“Neither China nor Russia wants Western intelligence to be aware of the depth and breadth of their strategic alignment,” said Alexander Korolev, a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
If China were to supply lethal aid, Korolev added, “everything would be done to cover this up.”
“And one way to cover it up is to make it look as if it’s just a part of regular, long-term military technical cooperation – rather than a response to the war.”
From the depths of despair, Libianca created a song that changed her life.
People (Check On Me), a tender cry for help that captured her at a crushing low point, has been streamed more than 150 million times since December.
It’s been number one for eight weeks on the UK’s Afrobeats chart. This Friday, it’s poised to enter the official Top 10 – a first for an artist from Cameroon.
“My whole life changed in a matter of hours,” says the singer. “I woke up in the morning and things had just flipped over.”
If you’ve heard People, you’ll know it from the hook alone.
“I’ve been drinking more alcohol for the last five days… Did you check on me?” sings the 22-year-old, her voice melancholy and mellifluous over a simple music box accompaniment.
The lyrics discuss her experience of the rare mood disorder cyclothymia, which causes emotional ups and downs that are similar to, but less extreme than, those of bipolar disorder.Figure caption,
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She wrote the song last November, after throwing a Thanksgiving party where she “felt invisible”.
“I’d been at a low point of my life for at least two weeks and I was just like, ‘I can’t take any more of this’,” she explains over the phone from Paris.
“There were self-harmful thoughts, over-thinking, really anxious – a bunch of things going on in my head.”
While her friends were celebrating, Libianca spent much of the night crying in the bathroom.
When she came downstairs, no-one noticed her puffy red eyes. No-one asked how she was. They simply offered her a drink.
“I felt like I was drowning in it and nobody could see me and I just needed some help.
“So I decided, you know what? Let me just go in the studio, because I feel better whenever I’ve done something productive. That helps me.
“I wasn’t expecting for People to come out. It’s just how I was feeling. I couldn’t write about anything else.”
‘This song has been my best friend’
Retreating to the studio in her Minneapolis home, her feelings flooded out unfiltered.
The hook, she says, is the “raw truth” about her drinking. For days, she’d been consuming tequila and Ouzo with wine chasers in an attempt to blot out her depression.
“Whenever I was drunk, I didn’t feel sad, so why not just drink some more?” she recalls.
“Clearly, after a few days, I was like, I can’t keep going like this. I can’t keep waking up every morning hung over.”
Image caption, “Right now I have the opportunity to show the rest of the world this is what I’m capable of.”
But the key to the song is the repeated refrain of “did you check on me?” It’s a post-pandemic plea to ask your friends how they’re really coping.
“After Covid, I feel like a lot of people became isolated. And no matter what anybody is going through, if you ask them, ‘How are you doing?’, the first thing they’re going to say is, ‘I’m fine’. It’s an automatic response.
“And I think what People is doing is breaking that [spell] and helping people to be more vulnerable and say, ‘I’m not doing well. I really need a hug from you right now’.
The reaction has been overwhelming.
One fan commented under People’s YouTube video: “As I’m going through my fourth panic attack of the day…. This song just makes me feel like I am not the only one.”
“This song has been my best friend for the past few weeks,” wrote another, who said Libianca’s music had comforted her after losing a child.
The comments page is full of similar stories. Encouragingly, it’s also full of strangers offering support and consolation.
“I couldn’t be more proud,” says Libianca, “because it’s really helping people get the support they need.
“And it helped me as well, because my friends didn’t know that’s how I was feeling when I recorded that song.”
Near death experience
The message has resonated globally. People is at number three in India, number five in New Zealand and number one in Nigeria.
For Libianca, it’s the culmination of more than 10 years as a musician, and a vindication after a stint on the US version of The Voice in 2021.
Image caption, Libianca chose country star Blake Shelton as her mentor on The Voice US
She was born Libianca Kenzonkinboum Fonji in St Paul, Minnesota, but left the US for Cameroon when she was four. Her mother was “going through some issues with immigration”, she explains, and decided to leave before being deported.
Settling in Bamenda, she started singing around the age of six, exercising her vocals “in church, in the boarding school, in chapel”.
“Music was a huge part of everything.”
The family moved back to Minnesota when she was a teenager and, although she harboured musical dreams, her parents encouraged her to pursue medicine and become a registered nurse.
“I can’t blame them,” she laughs. “Parents work so hard to come to this country and give us opportunities, and music is a big risk.”
Even so, her mother paid for voice lessons and guitar tuition, while her father briefly acted as her manager.
To keep them happy, she took a number of jobs while writing in her spare time.
The worst experience was in a nursing home where, while taking residents out for a swim day, she was accidentally pushed underwater, lost her footing and almost drowned.
“Luckily, somebody saw me and jumped into the pool to pull me out,” she recalls.Figure caption,
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Worried that she wasn’t making headway in music, she applied for The Voice, impressing judges with a soulful rendition of SZA’s Good Days, and progressed to the live shows before being voted out.
“I’m a very competitive person,” she recently told BBC World Service DJ Edu. “I don’t like to lose. So when I got eliminated, I was like, ‘I was doing so good on this show and I didn’t win? Are you serious! Something’s wrong!’”
But the show also taught her a valuable lesson: “Just when you think you’re at your full capacity, trust me, you’re not. You can push yourself even further.”
Some of the songs she performed on the show – including a cover of Billie Eilish’s Everything I Wanted – got an official release while the series was on air.
But it’s noticeable that Libianca’s solo material has veered more towards Afrobeats. On People, she even sings in her Cameroonian accent.
“I code-switch a lot,” says the singer. “So at home, most of the time, you hear me in my Cameroonian accent, then [outside] I will switch to an American accent because half of my childhood was in America. It happens without me even knowing.
“But when I get really angry,” she laughs, “all you’ll hear is the Cameroonian accent!”
For now, there’s little to be angry about. Libianca’s on a whistle-stop promotional tour of Europe before jetting home to work on new music, for release late this year.
“I’m feeling really good,” she smiles. “I feel like everything is starting to settle and I’m like, this is actually happening!
“I don’t have that much stress any more because I’ve literally accomplished the first of many milestones in my career, and I couldn’t be happier.”
Trainers, games consoles and other in-demand items are also targeted and sold at a profit by scalpers.
Now a BBC investigation has discovered how it happens so quickly.
Queue barging
To illustrate how it works, we joined the queue for Eurovision tickets on Tuesday, and brought some experts with us.
Like many others, we quickly found ourselves 2,000 or more spaces from the front.
Matthew Gracey-McMinn, who works for anti-bot company Netacea, says we’re seeing a digital version of queue-barging, or pushing in.
“Think of them as hundreds of friends,” he says.
But they’re not friends. They’re not even real. But as far as the system is concerned they are.
“Because it’s all digital, they can create these sort of imaginary people to barge into this imaginary queue,” says Matt.
Image caption, Expert Matt says touts will turn to commercial data centres to boost their computing power
Matt says even the basic laptop he’s using can mimic thousands of people. More ambitious scalpers will turn to the cloud to recruit even more processing power.
“Imagine the big server racks you see in movies that hackers have,” Matt says, describing large rooms full of dedicated network devices.
“They’re hiring those off cloud computing companies and firing all of that power into this.”
If you’ve ever felt like you don’t stand a chance of getting tickets, there’s a good chance this is why.
The Golden Circle
There are dozens of groups using bot software to attack online queueing systems – so many, that Matt says his company can’t track them all.
One, called The Golden Circle, provides members with what they need to beat the online queues.
For £99 ($118) a month they’re granted access to the circle and guidance on using a “queue pass” – computing code for manipulating ticketing systems.
One of the group’s founders, Josh Silverman, makes promotional videos talking about the money made from tickets by the group’s membership of about 400 people.
Speaking to the BBC, Josh, 34 and from London, says he previously used the software to buy limited-run trainers at retail price before selling them on at a huge profit.
Image caption, One of the groups using software to beat ticket queues is The Golden Circle – its Twitter account was removed after our investigation
In the UK, it’s illegal to use bots to buy more tickets than the promoter or venue allows.
But Golden Circle’s software doesn’t bulk buy – it purchases small numbers of tickets in multiple transactions.
What’s being done?
Since we approached Golden Circle, the group’s deleted its social media presence. But there are others and makers of queueing software describe tackling touts as a “constant battle”.
As soon as the companies change their system, the bot makers update their software, sometimes within minutes.
Stuart Galbraith is Ed Sheeran’s promoter and boss of event promoter Kilimanjaro Live.
As you might expect, he’s a long-time campaigner against ticket touts.
He says a small group of “power sellers” are behind the ticket trade in the UK, and stop customers who “could quite legitimately be buying them at face value”.
And Stuart says fans miss out in other ways.
“If touts can’t shift their tickets at their inflated price, they won’t drop the ticket price because it then spoils their marketplace,” he says.
“So not all the tickets that are purchased in bulk actually get sold.”Media caption,
Genuine Eurovision fan Josh’s attempt to get tickets was an emotional rollercoaster
The BBC spoke to Labour MP Kevin Brennan, who raised our investigation at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
Rishi Sunak said access to Eurovision should be “as broad as possible”, and said the government would “do all that we can to make certain that that happens”.
‘Absolutely gutted’
Three fans agreed to share their attempts to buy Eurovision tickets with us.
Two of them actually succeeded.
Gina, who had hoped to spend £30, ended up with a £380 standing ticket.
Another fan, Scott got two tickets for a total of £400.
Cheaper tickets usually sell out faster, but bot users also tend to target lower-cost options because there’s more profit in the resales.
Our third fan, Ed, didn’t get one.
Image caption, Andrew Earnshaw, on the left here with his Eurovision podcast co-hosts, said he didn’t know anyone who got tickets
Andrew Earnshaw, who runs a Eurovision podcast called Eurobliss, was also unsuccessful.
That’s despite trying to use a laptop, an iPad and two phones to get tickets.
“One of them clearly was actually working,” he says. “It took about an hour and a half to get to the front of the queue.”
When he did “there was just nothing available”. Andrew says it was the same for everyone he knows.
He says the fact tickets are already on sale for much more on secondary websites is “very depressing”
“This isn’t going to happen again probably in my lifetime.
“I can deal with it, because I did my best – but at the same time I’m absolutely gutted – and it’s not just me, it’s all of my friends.”
You and Yours: Secret Ticket Touts exposed, is available on BBC Sounds.
The freight forwarding fraternity in Ghana has kicked against the government’s intended policy to allow the self-clearing of goods by importers without recourse to Customs House Agents.
The freight forwarders have opined that not only does this threaten the security of their jobs but the policy, if not well implemented can have dire implications on trade facilitation and revenue mobilization for the state.
Speaking on the Eye on Port TV program, the Presidents of the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) and the Association of Customs House Agents, Ghana (ACHAG), said government may need to thoroughly reconsider the implementation of this policy which was announced during this year’s budget reading in parliament.
According to the President of ACHAG, Yaw Kyei, “government will lose a lot.” He explained that importers by themselves do not have the capacity to execute the clearance of goods by themselves due to the rigorous technical process involves in customs business.
“This system is not something you can take a day or two to go through. I wonder how we will train and educate the general public from all across the country to successfully do a declaration to clear goods at the ports. We believe that asking individuals to clear goods by themselves will be disastrous for the nation,” he exclaimed.
“Will we be able to identify the importer after the transaction has ended? What is his address? Our address system in Ghana is nothing to write home about,” Mr. Kyei continued.
The President of ACHAG said, on the other hand, customs house agents, or clearing agents, as they are commonly referred, are taken through training, certification, licensing, registration and other necessary procedures that ensure that their activities are accountable and traceable.
“We have our offices properly inspected. Our companies are properly instituted, we have board of directors, a management team, and assets recognized by customs and by the state so that in the event something goes wrong, you can fall on any of them,” he added.
The President of GIFF, Eddy Akrong doubled down on that notion, saying millions of cedis are recovered by Customs during Post-Clearance Audit due to the existence of clearing and forwarding agents.
“If an individual clears goods, and for some reason, customs detects any malfeasance, they come through us. Imagine if this individual comes from some far place across the globe, Customs will have to spread themselves thin to get hold of this person, without us.”
Mr. Akrong said his outfit isn’t against the concept of self-declarants as Ghana’s law already makes provision for that, so far as companies can apply for training and licensing to be able to clear their own goods.
He however stated that the freight forwarding fraternity will only feel short-changed if the rigorous, expensive processes undergone to train, certify, license, register, are relinquished in service of this new regime.
The President of GIFF explained that importers already inundated with their business load, simply lack the time and know-how to undergo customs house processes.
He said Ghana’s clearance system as it stands has the clearing agent acting as a liaison between importers, shipping lines, customs administrations, several regulatory agencies, terminal operators, and the processes involved require some level of technical ability and tact to efficiently execute.
“The whole system will become confusing because the trader will have to deal with all these people,” he warned.
The leadership of these freight forwarding associations expressed suspicion that this impending regime of self-clearing stems from the need to abide by the World Trade Organization’s objectives for trade facilitation. Yet, they asked government to tarry awhile while it take initiatives that cater to the context of Ghana’s maritime trade.
In the meantime, they have continued to petition government, especially parliament to clarify the nature of the impending policy action, with focus on the implications on job security, and security of state revenue.
“Is it that I can’t be here or that I’m not allowed to be here?” Jobu-Joy asks in the hit film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
The wry, subversive question from the film’s antagonist – who is hellbent on ending the world in which she feels unwelcome – sums up actress Michelle Yeoh’s Hollywood journey.
Yeoh is, of course, the film’s unlikely superhero – Evelyn Wang, a Chinese-American immigrant and laundromat owner who is swept into a multiverse.
The role, she says, is a reflection of the battles she’s fought to be recognised in Hollywood – much like the question posed by her nemesis.
“You want to have that seat at the table, so you can have the privilege to be seen and heard,” Yeoh tells the BBC in an interview over Zoom. “What I’m asking for is the privilege to compete.”
“Even from the day [Evelyn Wang] was born, her father says she’s a failure, because she was born a girl. It’s been a long time since I’ve read something that resonated so deeply with me.”
Yeoh’s portrayal of Wang has stormed this year’s awards season. After winning at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, she is now poised to make history at the Oscars.
“I’m very aware that it’s beyond me being recognised as an actress. It’s a whole community of Asians coming forward and saying: You have to do this for us.”
“Asians tend to not show so much emotion. And I think maybe it’s a misconception that we don’t need our stories told, which is not true,” she says. “It’s how we tell the story that makes a difference. The audience wants Hollywood to reflect the global community.”
Before her Hollywood success, Yeoh was already an A-lister in Asia.
She was born in Ipoh, Perak, in Malaysia, and attended the Royal Academy of Dance in London in her teenage years. A back injury cut short her dance career – but her training was not in vain as it helped her perform her own stunts in movies, for which she later became famous.
After winning the Miss Malaysia pageant, she started filming movies in Hong Kong and shot to fame with Yes Madam! in 1985. She played a police inspector and the movie was so successful that it inspired many other Chinese-language action films featuring female leads.
“I got myself into action films because I didn’t believe that women were damsels in distress. Their stories need to be told correctly,” Yeoh says.
Cody Foo, who was neighbours with Yeoh in Ipoh when he was five, says: “I remember my mum wanted to hang out with her all the time. I knew she was important because my mum would call her Aunty Michelle Yeoh, not Aunty Michelle. I remember asking to play with her keychain once and she let me, happy that it kept a child occupied while she chatted with my mum. She was basically like any other Aunty.”
Image caption, Cody Foo and his mother with Michelle Yeoh in 1996
Her success has left an indelible mark on many Malaysians like Cody, now a 33-year-old recording artist in the country.
“It is difficult to even imagine what success looks like for us minorities in the creative field, until Michelle Yeoh showed me that I could,” says Foo.
“In 1996, we went down to support her at the opening of her restaurant. Shortly after that, she left Malaysia to shoot the Tomorrow Never Dies and I never saw her again,” he says.
Yeoh landed her first major Hollywood role in the James Bond film, alongside Pierce Brosnan. She played a capable Chinese spy – a radical departure from the usual “Bond girl” – at a time when roles were deeply stereotyped for minorities and females.
In an interview with Elle magazine, she had said when she first got to America, people thought that if they spoke more slowly she would understand them better.
“They were shocked that I spoke English,” she says, still visibly perplexed at the memory. “I didn’t understand what was happening.”
“Being called a minority didn’t register with me. I come from Malaysia, and we are a multiracial society, and have always embraced each other’s differences,” she adds.
Her refusal to play submissive characters or be relegated to a mere accessory to male leads meant fewer roles. But slowly that changed.
Image caption, Everything Everywhere All at Once has a predominantly Asian cast
“The world has evolved, and there are other markets that will keep growing. That is good for Hollywood because it will show them that they have to evolve and be better,” says Yeoh.
But even now, it’s not just racial stereotypes she has to contend with.
“I think many of us, especially women, understand that as you age, you get put in certain boxes. As an actress, your roles get smaller and more insignificant,” she says.
“We have male actors in their 60s or 70s playing superheroes saving the world. But God forbid, why is it that a woman can’t do that?”
Yeoh’s Hollywood breakthrough role came in 2018 when she was cast as matriarch Eleanor Young in the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians – which also has a predominantly Asian cast.
She credits her success to young directors and storytellers: “So I depend on the next generation of forward thinkers like the Daniels, to be bold enough to write this script about a very ordinary woman who’s given an opportunity to be a superhero.”
“They make their own opportunities. They create their own doorways. I wish I was a writer, then I would’ve written a lot of my own scripts,” she adds.
Image caption, Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert on the set of Everything Everywhere All at Once
Everything Everywhere All at Once was a huge risk for her, her friends and colleagues said.
“But life is all about taking risks. If not, you’ll be doing the same thing over and over again.”
“I think the Asian community has felt so unseen for such a long time. But the sea of change is happening. It’s taken time, and I am only grateful to see it,” she says.
Perhaps it’s fitting that Michelle Yeoh, a stalwart of Asian cinema, is the first woman who identifies as Asian to receive an Oscar nomination, possibly proof that everything is changing. But maybe not everywhere. And certainly not all at once.Media caption,
A couple who engaged in such wild sex that it kept other hotel guests up were each fined £500.
On Valentine’s Day, Jamie Boultbee and Kaylie Hursthouse arrived at the Moorlands Izaak Walton in Ashbourne, Derbyshire.
Yet they turned out to be so erratic that early the next morning, cops had to be called.
They were handed a keycard so they could enter the space where the restroom door had been harmed.
Prosecutor Karen Wright said: ‘Hursthouse was heavily intoxicated and smelt of alcohol. She was slurring her words and was unsteady on her feet. Boultbee was lying in bed. Hursthouse said the reason for the noise was them having rough sex.
‘She said a bruise to her head was from headbutting someone a few days earlier out of anger due to her losing a child.’
The hotel said they caused £1,000 in damages, including £250 they had to give as refunds to guests in three other rooms disturbed by the couple’s sex.
Boultbee, who has 33 convictions for 65 offences, was represented by Mike Kimberley who described him as an alcoholic.
He said: ‘The young lady saw he was suffering from depression and thought it was a good idea to go away for a romantic night. They were totally inebriated, angry and whatever.
‘The manager came. He was fully co-operative and Boultbee did say he would pay for any damage. He remembers kicking the bathroom door. The hotel has to be compensated. It is only right he pays £500 compensation.
‘Doctors have told him if he continues with his current lifestyle he will be dead within two years.’
Mark Bromley, mitigating for Hursthouse, said: ‘Unfortunately this planned romantic over-exuberant intimacy caused a disturbance for other residents of the hotel.
‘She also accepts that she should pay towards the problems that were caused.. They spent nearly £200 for this break away for two days. They had to cut their stay short because of the incident.’
The couple, from Burton, admitted criminal damage and were fined £500 each along with other costs totalling £161.
A third person has died from the crush that broke out at a New York concert by rap star GloRilla on Sunday, police have confirmed.
Aisha Stephens, 35, of Syracuse had been in hospital since the show, where the crowd panicked and surged for the exits shortly after the music ended.
Police say the incident, at Rochester’s Main Street Armory, may have been started by unfounded fears of gunfire.
The venue has since had its licence revoked.
The decision was made after the owner failed to show up for a scheduled meeting with the police chief and Rochester’s city attorney on Wednesday.
“It is one step we can immediately take to ensure that the events of Sunday night are not repeated,” said police chief David Smith.
“The bottom line is, lives were lost, and we need to take steps to make sure that no lives are lost in the future if this was indeed something that was preventable.”
The crush claimed the lives of two other women – nursing assistant Brandy Miller, 35, and city employee Rhondesia Belton, 33. Seven others were taken to hospital with injuries.
GloRilla ‘heartbroken’
An investigation into several possible causes, including “possibly crowd size, shots fired, pepper spray and other contributing factors,” is currently under way.
Police are also trying to determine whether the crowd size exceeded the capacity of the Armory and whether the proper safety measures were taken.
GloRilla, whose breakout song F.N.F. (Let’s Go) was nominated for best rap performance at last month’s Grammy Awards, only learned about the tragedy after leaving the venue.
She later tweeted: “I am devastated and heartbroken over the tragic deaths that happened after Sunday’s show.
“My fans mean the world to me 😢. Praying for their families & for a speedy recovery of everyone affected.”
Image caption, GloRilla was one of the breakout rap stars of 2022 in the US
Fans who attended the gig recalled scenes of hysteria as fear gripped the audience.
“I didn’t see anything but the whole crowd pushing everyone towards the bathroom like a wave pool,” 28-year-old Tamira De Jesus told Rolling Stone magazine.
“I was literally being suffocated while trying to help people on the ground stand up. I heard a man literally say, ‘[Expletive] them, step on them.’
“It was the most inhumane thing I have seen in my whole life and I am still having anxiety.”
Another attendee recalled: “Me and the girl next to me were climbing on each other trying to get each other up.”
Ikea Hayes, 28, told local reporters that she remembered praying and telling herself: “You got to get up. You got to move. If you stay here they’re going to keep running you over.”
She went back to the venue on Monday morning to retrieve earrings, a phone and a set of keys she had lost in the chaos.
Tribute to victims
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown paid tribute to the first victim, Rhondesia Belton, 33, who had worked at the city’s Traffic Violations Agency, on Monday.
“This is another difficult day for our City’s workforce and our entire community,” Brown wrote on Twitter. “I join all of our City employees in mourning the loss of one of our own.”
Miller’s family said her life was “one full of love and joy”.
“If you knew her, you knew that her spirit could lift anyone out of a bad mood. She cherished her life and celebrated her loved ones.”
Doctors and nurses lined the hallway at Rochester’s Strong Hospital to honour the 35-year-old, who had decided to donate her organs if she died.
Her sister said her heart, kidneys, and liver were used to save four other lives.
Tributes were also paid to Aisha Stephens by the Pop Warner foundation, where she had been a cheerleading coach.
“She made an incredible impact on so many,” said the organisation in a statement. “She will be greatly missed.”
